Jedi Hunters
by Edwin Loftus
Summary: Soon after the purge of the Jedi, Vidian Wol, a Jedi Academy reject, was recruited for a special Imperial unit to hunt for fugitive Jedi. Sixty years later, in the aftermath of the Korriban Sith invasion of Corruscant, Vidian wants to make amends for his past actions by helping the Jedi to hunt Sith Spears that escaped the New Jedi counter-strike.


THE JEDI HUNTERS

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

**Vidian Wol**; Jedi Hunter (Human male)

**Fila Artenis; **Jedi Hunter (Human female)

**Jabban Beddar**; Commander, Internal Security Bureau, Galactic Empire

**Enrik Voranna**; Jedi Knight (Bothan male)

**Corran Horn**; Jedi Master (Human male)

**Kamit Ars-Moselet** ; Jedi Master, 'Old' Order (Gossam male)

**Marder Dallestri**; Captain, Galactic Alliance Internal Security (Human male)

**Jon Antarean**; Lieutenant, Imperial Navy, attached to Internal Security Bureau, Galactic Empire, (Human male)

**Abarim Bath**; Jedi Knight (Arconian male)

**Alina Imaprov**; Jedi Padawan (Human female)

Chapter 1 – HOME COMES THE HUNTER. THE HUNT HAS COME HOME…

Vidian Wol stepped off of the hover tram onto the passenger platform and took a few moments to orient himself. He was back in the relative security of his own neighborhood in the Old Lakes District with the 400 story tower where he lived in sight. The nighttime sky above Corruscant was lit with a dusky glow reflecting the uncountable lights of the planet engulfing city beneath it. Other people, mostly human, passed him by with indifference, not sensing in him a man with a newly found purpose, a hunter contemplating his prey.

The intricacies of a Jizz group jam came from one end of the landing and mixed with the rhythmic percussions and deep brass sounds of a Gaizi-oro band from the other. Nearer at hand a deep-fried litella hawker touted his delicacies while next door a trio of pleasure-girls cooed and posed provocatively to woo potential marks into their employer's den. The scent of baked red-slug mixed with stale ale, sweet hot-glazed Lily blossoms, searing lung-fish and grilling nerf entrails combined to overwhelm the metal and ozone odor of a thousand over-heating grav-lifters and power-couplers. The sights, the sounds and smells of mid-level Corruscant hadn't changed in the fifty years of Vidian's absence … or they'd changed, only to find their natural level again, like the constant show of streaming lights from a million speeders and transports passing down invisible lanes overhead. Decades spent in the back-routes of Ord Mantell, Corellia and their neighboring systems seemed never to have happened as Vid drank in the ordered mayhem of it all. "There is no world like Corruscant", the old joke went … "and hopefully never again will be."

A narrow part of the pedestrian walk swung around a jutting part of this building's structure … "Was that always here?" he wondered. And then he remembered the sprite-like figure of Fila, her white-blond hair lifted slightly by a springtime breeze wafting through the artificial canyon. She leaned against a railing at almost this very spot, angled out over the abyss, dressed in a short, black, frilly skirt, her legs encased to thigh level in shear black hose, her skin translucent in the backlight of a glowlamp … a lamp blocked from view by this bend in the path … She sensed him watching and turned toward him … smiling.

"Was that fifty … no … it was sixty years ago. We knew so little then, about anything … and I was such a fool …"

He found the spot where they had stood, "The railing is different. It's been replaced," and leaned out to look at the stars and the streaking lights of the passing speeders … "It was here I kissed her, for the very first time."

The memory faded. With its passing Vidian's thoughts were drawn to a different woman. He let his mind quiet, then reached out into the thick soup of the Force. "Is she here? Did she follow me?" His recent experience with the touch of multiple, sudden deaths made him reluctant to reach out too far.

Vid turned and began to stroll along the elevated walk that would take him to a familiar turbo-lift. There he would drop ten levels to a bridge that connected this building with his own. Normally he took more time to notice the people around him, to look in the display windows of the shops he passed and perhaps to stop for an ale at Anto's, a cozy little tavern he'd visited frequently in the past and at least several times more recently. They were headed there that night, now long ago, celebrating a kill with no lost Hunters … when she had waited for him.

Of course … Anto's had a different name back then. Everything was different now, a decade after the Yuuzhan Vong. But a decade was only a very short time. At Vid's age of 83 years, a decade ago meant "yesterday". Vid's memories of this spot went back much further than that. During the last days of the Old Republic and the early days of the Empire, Anto's had been called "Gaddhi's Castle" after the Duro that once owned it. Vid Wol paused in passing, remembering the friends he used to meet with at Gaddhi's. His memory leaped back to that last night with the team all gathered. Then he stroked his short white beard and turned his thoughts back to what had just happened, the events that told him where the Force had been prodding him for most of the past three years, the intensity of the hunt and the terror he'd felt as the prey.

He had only recently returned to Corruscant after a very long absence. During most of the years since the Rebellion he had lived with his wife on Tannadorin 4, an off-route world between the Ord Mantell and Corsin. Vid's wife had passed away just before the Second Galactic Civil War and he might have returned then, but his children needed help as they established their own families and the feeling of something left unfinished that tended to draw Vidian toward Corruscant had seemed to fade away for a while.

He'd moved to Corellia with his Daughter, Dellis after his wife's death and helped her and Narrik, her soldier husband raise their three children. Narrik died during the Vong War, leaving Dellis even more dependent on her father's presence. But the grandchildren grew up and moved away and the sense of incompletion settled in on Vid's heart again. When Dellis remarried, Vid knew the time had come for him to return to Corruscant, and make amends for his terrible crimes. How he didn't know, but the glimmer of an idea was taking root.

Decades earlier he had found what he thought was lasting relief from the guilt he bore when, as a tracker in the Rebel Alliance, he led the team that located a hypothermic Luke Skywalker as he made his way back to the Rebel base on Hoth after escaping from a Wampa's lair. It was the only time he met the famous 'Hero of the Rebellion' and 'Restorer of the Jedi Order', but it was the end for then of a growing sense of need that had plagued him since the day he left the Empire's service and began his quest for redemption. In the decades since, whenever a new story of Skywalker's achievements was made public, he had felt a small reassurance that he had done something to repay those he had so wronged, that all of those "The Restorer" had saved had also in very small part, been saved by Vidian Wol. But always a quiet voice inside would answer, "Not enough Vidian … not yet."

Vidian arrived on Corruscant shortly after the coup that toppled President Isaard and led to the decision to relocate the Jedi Temple off of Corruscant, its ancient home. The Jedi were gone now, for the most part. All that remained were a handful supervising the New Order's transition and a few others on assignments of their own. To Vid it seemed ironic that the Jedi were leaving in part because the government had allegedly been infiltrated by Sith and the Jedi had led the coup-de-tat that overthrew them and an overreaching and hostile Chief of State. It was, from the view of an ordinary citizen that had heard the reports on both events, eerily like the coup against Chancellor Palpatine that failed and had led to the Jedi Purge. This time the Jedi had succeeded, but they would still be gone as a result … living and able to return, but gone as a major presence on the Capitol Planet.

As Vid reached his own building, a four hundred-story tower, restored after the Vong's re-shaping efforts, he passed through one of the public lobbies where residents and visitors sometimes staged events. This night a Talsian family was hosting the 'coming of age' rite for their daughter. Though Vid had not lived here long, he already recognized some of the several hundred people gathered and nodded in acknowledgement to those that noticed him. He used this crowd to screen his last 'look-back', a precautionary effort to spot any who might be on his trail. If he detected the woman, he had already determined to lead her on a chase away from these innocents. If this hunter was following him, his apartment would afford him no protection anyway. Running would be his only hope.

After the Battle of Endor, which Vidian spent in the hull of a Mon Cal transport ship, he stayed on in service of the Republic through much of the struggle with the Imperial remnants, retiring to private life only after the defeat of Admiral Thrawn. A decorated veteran with citations from the Rebel Alliance and the New Republic, he briefly resumed his aborted career as a private investigator. But unknown to any but his family, he was also, a highly decorated veteran of the Imperial Security Bureau and it was this service that had left a stain on his soul that could not be washed away. Now he stood in the present, waiting for he knew not what kind of monster to find him, where only that morning he had stood with his daughter and granddaughter.

He felt lighter in spite of his fear of having been followed and searched for the too familiar, burdening shadow within him. It was gone for now and by that absence he knew that he had found his mission … at last. Vidian Wol was an old man now. He still stood lean and tall at 1.9 meters, even if nowhere as strong and sure as in his youth. In a matter of years … perhaps a decade, he would become progressively more enfeebled, for he was not of a long-lived line and could barely expect to see one hundred and ten. If his chance for redemption was going to come, it must come now. And this day's events promised that it finally had.

When he'd first returned to Corruscant, Vid had moved into a mid-level flat in the Governmental District thinking that the answer to his need might lie with those Jedi that still remained on planet. But their nearness made him feel uneasy, reminding him of his shame while offering no path to redemption. The intense rippling they made in the Force was too familiar. He often could not ignore the impressions they left when they were too near. In that district they were very often too near and none of this served Vidian Wol's needs. The Force still would not guide him to his purpose.

After a few months he sold the rest of his lease and moved to a cheaper but more comfortable apartment on the far side of the planet, almost 180 degrees from the Government district and its Jedi Temple.

The ISB had given Wol and the others a tour of the Temple a year after the night of the Purge. The whole contingent had walked the once grand and polished stone halls and corridors, at that time still pocked and stained by blaster-fire and scored by the marks of Lightsabers. They were led by a clone Captain who had participated in the raid. At times he'd stop and tell the tale of the fighting that went on in the room or hallway they were standing in. He spoke of the Masters, the Knights and Padawans, once their leaders, on that night their "objectives" … of charges and desperate stands that cut down dozens of troopers … of clones tossed and shattered like twigs against the walls, of skilled and hardened veterans broken like toys and flung away, crippled or dying. Even the children took their toll that night, flashing out of places of hiding to maim and kill … and fall to the discipline of concentrated fire. It was a sobering tour. A tour of visions made brutally real in the months that followed. "Jedi" became a name for terror to Vidian and his comrades and living so near to that Temple, even so long after these events, haunted Vid Wol and plagued his dreams with nightmares until he moved away from the building's reminder.

Over the next six months he met neighbors he could like and they had introduced him to the dining and cultural attractions of the district. When they showed him Anto's it had taken Vid nearly an hour to connect it with the old Gaddhi's Castle of his younger days. He remembered coming here with Fila and Ruus, Luni and Dor Kelles and many of the others after hunts both successful and not, to toast those that had survived. They were young. Their work was deadly dangerous. This had been one of the places they would come to unwind their tensions and ironically, whether in a jest of the Force or just by accident, it was right across the gap from Vidian's current apartment. Sometimes he would get a little teary remembering the names and faces of those fallen comrades. But unlike the faces of their prey, these did not tear at his conscience, their eyes did not follow him in the dark or their voices cry out in pain in the waking part of his nightmares.

"We were all too young!" he mumbled. A group of guests at the party looked at him in surprise. "And we were fools!"

Satisfied that he had not been followed, Vid continued to the turbo-lift that carried him to the floor on which he lived.

Vid's daughter, Dellis and granddaughter, Bessany, had visited at the start of the new year and this visit had healed whatever sores remained from the breakup of the Wol family and Vidian's departure. His granddaughter announced that she was expecting her first and with his attention brought to focus by this, his ability let him recognized that the child within her was already emanating a power in the Force. Vid had never kept his modest ability a secret from his kin and so he told her what he'd sensed.

"My dear, I can feel your baby. She shines with Force energy."

They understood that his pronouncement was real, but neither Dellis nor Bessany took the news well.

"Are you certain?" pleaded Dellis, hoping he would unsay his words.

Bessany was more distressed, "It can't be so, Grandfather! I don't want the Jedi to take my baby away! I won't let them!"

"Calm down. Calm yourselves," Vidian soothed. "That was an old practice, long ago. I don't think they do that anymore … In fact, I'm sure of it! Many things have changed since the Old Republic and the Old Jedi Order. I don't know how they handle things now, but I'm sure they don't take children away from their parents like they used to."

"Besides, I see people with Force abilities all of the time. Most are like me, not strong enough to attract the interest of the Jedi."

As he gave this reassurance, Vid felt the Force answer, telling him he was wrong. This yet unborn child would be of great interest to the Jedi. But he kept that foresight to himself.

"What will you name her? Have you and Orest picked one yet?"

"Yes," answered Bessany, shyness mixed with excitement changing her mood faster than persuasion could have. "It's part of why we came to see you. If it's alright, I want to name her after Grandmother … We'll call her "Fila"! Fila Artenis"

Something clicked into place inside of Vidian, another tiny bit of his emptiness had been filled. "This is part of it", he thought. "Not all, but part of it … but why only part?"

"Is using her name alright?" asked Bessany.

Vid could feel that this infant might be part of the peace he had sought. But Bessany had followed him to Corruscant … If this was part of the answer he was seeking, why had he needed to come here?

"Yes my dear. Of course it's alright! Your grandmother would feel so honored by your choice!"

Often such moments in life are times of new joy and unblemished hope. The strength of these can sweep aside other cares and so they did that night and through the week that followed. Questions still remained unanswered. What did this partial relief of Vidian's concerns mean? Why Corruscant? and more. These doubts lingered, but did not dim the visit further.

Dellis and Bessany noticed this new lightness in Vidian's mood. That lightness convinced them that he was truly pleased with their news and fanned their love for him and made the rest of the visit more enjoyable and one of the happiest times they could remember with their father-grandfather who had always appeared to carry some great burden in his life. When it was time for the visit to end, the parting was a tearful one with pledges of another visit soon. Dellis hired a cab to take them and at the women's insistence, Vidian went along to see them off at the spaceport. The 'goodbyes' were sweet and over too soon. Vid was left in the waiting area as they boarded a shuttle and watched alone as evening began to darken the sky and the light of glowlamps grew to replace the light of day and their ship lifted from its berth and slowly passed, diminishing as it rose into the air.

No longer burdened by the women's luggage, Vid decided to dismiss the cab and take the public tram back to his neighborhood. The interior of the tram-car was brightly lit with an industrial gleam that spoke of auto-cleaning systems and mar-resistant surfaces. Meant to accommodate a variety of species, the brushed metal and dyed plastic interior was arranged with seats of varying size and height as well as areas to stand or squat while holding exposed and polished metal rods for safety. Vid took a seat on an inward-facing bench, his back to the dark windows and for a while, he watched the holovid advertisements playing on and about the opposite wall and below the panels of the metal ceiling.

The tram stopped twice more before leaving the spaceport, each time adding a dozens more passengers. These slowly pushed past Vid, shuffling along in the rapid, mini-step people use when caught in tight foot traffic as they headed for seats and other supports further back in the passenger compartment. It was a group of four better than averagely dressed, but rough-looking males that caught Vid's attention. They didn't look like public tram riders, but like high-rollers with the credits to pay for their transportation. They stood out and aroused Vid's curiosity just by their appearance and without even trying he could tell that one of them had something even more interesting about him.

Their leader seemed to be a Bith, ordinarily lean and a little more than ordinarily tall. With him were three others, a Devaronian and two humans. It was to one of the humans that Vid's attention was drawn.

Pale-skinned with short black hair and a pointed beard, the man was an empty space in the Force. Not an android or a disguised Yuuzhan Vong, Vidian knew this type of signature well. He was a Force-user hiding his Force potential, cutting it off from his surroundings and leaving an empty void any trained Force-sensor of Vidian's caliber could spot.

Whoever had taught this Jedi hadn't done a good enough job of it. The man's shield was porous, allowing flashes of his hidden power to leak out. From a distance, he might keep another user from noticing him in a crowd, but in these close quarters …

The next thing Vid noticed was that this was no Jedi. Vid would not have been surprised by a shielded Jedi, particularly hiding among some suspicious-looking people. But this man had a different "taste" to his presence in the Force. This was a Jedi equivalent user of the Force, but of the Darkside, not the Light. Vid had met such people before, in a very different past and he knew that there were rumors in this later time of a "Dark Academy" an alternative to the Jedi training facility on Yavin 4. Perhaps this was one of their pupils or graduates, operating covertly under the Jedi's noses, or maybe hoping to exploit the Jedi's ongoing departure.

Then Vid felt the brush of something foreign and unwholesome, not just the Darkside of the Force, but something more … something uncomfortably familiar … probing about itself like a thin cloud of expanding vapor, searching for the one who had intruded into its awareness, simultaneously soothing and coaxing with a cloying Siren's song of welcome and desire while mustering a dark bolus of anger hidden just beyond true perception to unleash upon the unwitting trespasser. Vidian felt a thrill of sympathetic terror for whomever had become the subject of this search until he realized that the subject was himself as an oily wisp of this power seemed to caress and seize onto his own mind. He realized that he had been too relaxed and he had been detected.

Unconsciously Vid started to reach for the small hold-out blaster he carried with him, when the strand of Dark energy slipped over him and seemed to move on. In the corner of his vision Vidian caught a flicker of movement from the bearded man and to Vid's right, a tough-looking human male in spacer's gear stiffened.

Vid closed down his presence in the Force, but not before he sensed the sudden exiting of life from the spacer so near to him and felt a tug as something transparent and barely visible sipped past him, drawn to the bearded man's hand.

The tram stopped. The four males stood along with a dozen other passengers and began to exit by the rear door onto the platform beyond.

A memory of his training flashed through Vidian's mind … Jabban Beddar lecturing … "Just find something near you to focus on, an ugly alien, a pretty girl, a building, it doesn't matter. Just don't think about hunting or your quarry. If noticed while probing and you can't escape the target's attention, the best thing is to drop your defenses and let them know that you are weaker than they are. Act like a dorat, show them your belly and let them sniff. When someone as powerful as a Jedi sees your power guarded, they may assume that you are more powerful than you are. But if they can see your power unguarded, they'll know you are much weaker than them and will assume that you're no real threat."

As the four stood on the platform and the tram began to pull away the bearded man turned and appeared to look right at Vidian. Once again, in spite of his block, he felt those strangely corrupted tendrils of probing awareness slither over him. The dead man in the next seat slumped and fell over onto his side. No one but Vidian appeared to notice.

Arriving back at his residence, Vidian walked until he reached the door of his apartment. The suite of rooms seemed larger now with his daughter and granddaughter gone. Sounds seemed to echo and the shadows seemed more empty than before. The apartment's mouse-droid whirred as it emerged from its niche to check the entryway for any dirt Vid might have tracked in.

"Just you and me again, little guy."

The droid paused only a moment, waiting for instructions, then tweeted and rolled back to its hide-away. Vid draped his jacket on a chair by the door, put away the breakfast dishes then picked up some flimsies and packing materials left behind and fed them into the cycler. He had learned the Voddist Rituals on Tannadorin 4 and took a moment to make an appeal on behalf of the spacer on the hover-tram. The Voddists taught redemption and rebirth into a new existence greater that this one. Vid asked The Illuminator to receive the spacer's spirit. But the Voddists also taught the duty to protect and Vid knew that the spacer's death had placed a burden on his shoulders. He would not blame himself for the Darksider's actions. A light probe through the Force was no excuse for killing another sentient. But the "duty to protect" fell on anyone able to do so who knew of a threat. It was many years since Vidian last hunted a Force-user, but now responsibility for the spacer's death was his obligation. Unwittingly, the Darksider had brought on himself the very risk he'd probably sought to avoid.

Beneath the little shrine he found one of his granddaughter's stockings, shrunken to tiny size in the absence of her leg to fill it. He could smell its perfumed scent and held it briefly nearer his nose, then folded it reverently in his hands. Vid stood, picked up his jacket, and walked to the closet-wall in his sleeping chamber. He pressed a stud concealed in the decorative pattern and the closet doors drew back into their pockets revealing his half empty wardrobe. He hung up his jacket and then his hand found another stud on the on the closet's side-wall and pressed it, opening a drawer just below. On top lay a dress cap and gloves he had worn during the victory celebration on Endor after the battle's conclusion. He remembered how most of them had thought that lasting peace was won that night, but soon they discovered how wrong they were.

He opened the next drawer down and looked at the carefully folded and wrapped frock and small shoes with opalescent bead-work that went with it. Besides these was a packet of jewelry, all things his wife had worn, some flimsy letters and old holocrystals, mementos of a long life. Bessany's stocking joined them.

He opened the first drawer again and rummaged through it with his fingers. Beneath the cap and gloves lay a packet of flimsies showing his service records and discharge orders, a case with various medals and citations he had earned or just been awarded because he was there. Behind that lay a small case with his Republic-issued blaster and military grade dagger. To the right of that he found what he was searching for, a tubular plastic flimsy case once used by military couriers for carrying messages. Vid pulled this and the blaster's case out, walked over to the bed and sat down on its edge.

The blaster was dull black with a hard, rubber-like pistol grip set in its duranium frame. He checked the charges on its power-pack and the spare that came with it. Both still held full charges. The dagger, oiled after its last use, slid easily from its sheath.

Memories came back to him …

The snow was coated with a frozen rime of sharp ice that crunched as the villagers crossed it, letting their feet sink another foot into the softer snow beneath. Ahead in the morning light lay the wreck of the craft that had crashed in the night, a strange creation of uneven growths encrusting a shell in which still living components of the ship struggled to move and function as the freezing cold slowly sapped that life away.

"It's a Vong ship!" said Archen Mayton. "What's it doing here?"

Mikkal Harben crept in closer, past the line of melting where the native grasses showed again for the first time in a month, now coated in slick, clear ice.

"I can't see anyone inside!" he reported, keeping his hunting rifle pointing at the open hatchway.

"Toss in an incendiary", said Archen. "The rest of you spread out. Circle the site. If anyone got out of there, they'll have left a trail in the snow."

White flame blazed from the interior of the ship as it died with its symbiotic equipment-forms. Some screamed as they died, but to Vidian Wol the strangest thing was the absence of any voice in the Force these dozens of painful deaths brought.

"Over here!" shouted Gus Pankarin.

Most of the twenty men gathered to Gus's call. A twin track led from the crash-site in a straight course toward the nearest reach of the forest.

Vid was recognized as the best tracker among them, so he was allowed the freedom to walk the first ten meters of the trail alone.

"Definitely two of them! One's dragging his right leg. The other may be helping him or may be injured as well. His gaits off … shorter strides with his left."

Vid tried to probe ahead. Injured beings ought to give off loud signals in the Force, but there was nothing. Beneath the snow, beneath the surface of the underlying soil, he could sense life. Hibernating creatures, their energy drawn down to minimum, yet he could sense them still … why not the Yuuzhan Vong?

"Form two lines, ten and eight. Second line four meters behind the first", ordered Archen. "There are too many hiding places ahead. I want everyone to keep an eye on the men next to you and keep alert. These are enemy soldiers and should be considered extremely dangerous."

The two ranks centered behind Vidian and Archen, the village defenders marched to the edge of the forest still following the tracks in the snow. Ten meters into the wood the first Vong took them by surprise. He rose out of a small thicket of shrub three meters off the line of the track they'd left. Before anyone could react, the scarred humanoid reached for a bandolier across his chest and threw a spread of pellets in a back-handed spread. Half a dozen blasters fired, heavy hunting weapons, powered for deep penetration. They tore the upper half of the Vong to shreds just as screams from the front line showed that his attack had been more effective than it looked. The "pellets" were some kind of flying insect that accelerated to the speed of bullets and hit the tree villagers just to Wol and Mayton's left. Vid thought all three were dying from the emanations of pain they put out in the Force, but with help from the men behind them, all three struggled to their feet.

"I've seen reports that said these Vong use some kind of a ballistic hand-weapon," said Archen. "That must have been it, but they're supposed to be lethal."

"It's minus thirty-one" said Conner Fulmen. "Maybe the freeze and these men's cold-suits slowed them down enough …"

Vid was making his way toward the body of the downed Vong warrior from the right while Gus Pankarin circled toward it from the left. Vid had the lower torso in sight and the Vong's head and right arm when something slithered toward him. Vid felt adrenalin surge and trigger a burst of Force enhanced speed, not enough to evade the strike that came at him from the snake-like thing in the snow, but enough for him to turn so that it hit his heat-exchange unit instead, cutting deep into its frame. Vid grabbed the thing with his right hand as it slowed, trapped by the machinery it was lodged in. He pulled his knife just in time to catch the creatures head as it shot toward his face, his blade slicing through its open mouth and several centimeters down along its body.

"Close!" exclaimed Gus as he lowered his blaster.

Archen Mayton detailed two of the younger men to escort their three wounded back to the guards left with their vehicles. Before they went, Mikkal Harben switched-out his heat-exchanger with Vidian's ruined one. He was well enough insulated not to freeze on the way back and could open his suit if he got too warm.

They found the other Vong a kilometer further on. These were interstellar military fighters and it made sense that they had some way of dealing with the cold, but whatever it was, it had failed this pilot. They found him nodding off in a snow pocket that had swallowed him to the waist. From the lethargy of his movements they figured he was either suffering hypothermia or succumbing to other injuries. After a short debate over trying to capture him, the Vong regained enough focus to notice them and started to reach for his belt. Archen, Vid and Conner all fired at the same time reducing his head to something unrecognizable. It froze rigid before it could fully collapse.

Once more focused on the present, Vid tested the edges of the knife's blades with his thumb and then dry- shaved a little hair from his arm to confirm its sharpness. These tools he set aside and next he picked up the communications case.

The cylinder was flat green, worn and chipped along its edges, its surface scratched and pitted. Holding it by its ends he twisted them in opposite directions. It had been at least fifteen years since he'd inspected the contents. The cylinder resisted, then gave and separated into two pieces. Cradled in his lap he pulled the halves apart and his "memento" a time-worn but beautifully crafted thing of dark wood and yellow metal slid out and lay across his knees.

Chapter 2 – WILL YOU COME A'HUNTING? A HUNTER WILL YOU BE? YOU HAVE BEEN THE PREY BUT NOW A HUNTER YOU WILL BE …

Vidian Wol checked the image from his reception droid's camera. The potential client was a tall human male in his middle years, dark haired and dressed in a business suite of black. As a twenty-two year-old just starting his first business, Vid had been uncertain about the expense of the receptionist. He was told it would add a more professional appearance to his operation and make him easier to reach. So far he had to admit that the skills of the CP-N model had helped him attract and land a more prosperous clientele. The man in his reception room was an example. But Vid didn't stop at just the droids images. He reached out through the Force and checked the prospect first hand.

As expected, he found a somewhat harried businessman, trying to put together an operation and in need of someone who could help him track down the personnel with the skills he needed. That was Vidian's specialty, using the Force to find things and people. He couldn't do much else with the Force, that was the reason the Jedi Temple had returned him to his family after only 8 years of training. His skill level hadn't even qualified him for the Farm or Healers Training. After finishing school he'd worked a series of odd jobs until he'd built enough seed money to open his own service as a "Locator" an investigator for hire specializing in finding lost valuables and people who were missing or just hadn't been identified yet for some skill or crime.

Vid buzzed the door and the CP-N droid directed the client to enter. As he came in the door, Vid could sense that the man held a weak amount of Force power, even less it appeared, than Vid had, but it was present, none-the-less.

"I'm Commander Jaban Beddar of Imperial Security" said the stranger and suddenly he was gone.

Vid could still see him as he sat smiling in the chair on the opposite side of the desk, but in the Force he wasn't there at all. When Vid shut his eyes it was as though he was alone in the room. When he opened them, there was the man in black, still smiling at him. Vid kept a blaster under his desk-top. He drew it and pointed the muzzle at the image of a man before him.

"What do … "

His hand was shoved aside, the trigger on his blaster blocked so he couldn't pull it even if he could aim it at the man.

"Stop that!" said Beddar. I may be weak as Force users go, but I'm still far stronger than you."

Vid tried again to aim the blaster, but couldn't. This wasn't a holoprojection or a droid imitating human life. It was a force user in the flesh. He'd relaxed whatever technique he had used to block Vid's senses, but he still didn't appear any stronger than Vid.

"I've nothing to do with the Jedi if that's what you're looking for! I washed out twelve years ago when I was only ten. I'm not part of anyone's conspiracy!"

"I know that," said Beddar. "That's why I'm sitting here and not calling in the Stormtroopers from your outer office."

Suddenly Vid could sense the clones where minutes before the office had seemed empty except for CP-N.

"How is it that you can block my Force perception"?

"It's really the same as you being able to sense things by reading their effects on the Force. But what I am good at is blocking other people from both perceiving through the Force and from using it to manipulate things. Like you, I can do other things as well, but I am weak with them as compared to the type of users the Jedi used to recruit. Like you, I was raised in the Jedi Temple, but didn't pass the tests to be trained as a Jedi. They offered to let me stay on at the Farm, but I didn't see myself in the life of a researcher or a scientist. There was one thing I was better than most Jedi at, and that was "hiding".

"I thought that if I focused on this one talent and got good enough at it, I could make myself useful. I spent all of my youth building and testing my control until I could sneak up on even the Masters without being noticed. And I found that I could do other things as well. In a very limited range, I could block other Force users, disrupting their control. I tried to make my skill available to the Temple, but they rejected me again. They said there was no one whose senses they wanted to block or whose control of the Force they wanted to interrupt. I gave up eventually and went on about my life."

"Then came the night of the Purge. Afterwards I started noticing all of these new Force users around and I used my power to infiltrate their operations base here on Corruscant. Once I was inside though, I realized that I had accomplished nothing. If I wanted to spy for some other power it might mean something. But the only people I could really fool were the ones who had so much power they took it for granted. I was caught … by ordinary guards. Things might have gone badly, but I came up with an idea and was able to convince some of the Force users in Palpatine's service. One of those is a cyborg called, "Lord Vader". He tried to question me using the Force and I was able to block him. Then he tried to strangle me and I blocked him again. He would have chopped me into pieces, but I spoke fast offering to build a team that could take care of the stray Jedi that had escaped the purge. He gave me a chance to tell my idea to the Chancellor … have you seen what he looks like now? Barely recognizable … those Jedi really did something terrible to him."

"The Jedi tried to kill the Chancellor and take over the Senate," explained Beddar, as Vidian lay his blaster on the desk. "They failed … twice, but some of them are still around, still hatching new plots. They are dangerous and must be rooted out. I mean to do that and I want you on my team."

A few moments of silence passed while Vidian thought about this offer.

"If you want to hire me to find Jedi, I may be able to track them for you. But I'm not interested in joining anyone's team."

Beddar's smile broadened. "You don't have a choice. You became part of my team before I even walked through that door. You just don't know it yet."

"Welcome aboard, citizen Wol. You are going to make this planet a safer and more peaceful place to live. Do well and you will be generously rewarded. Fail in your duty and if the Jedi don't kill you … we will."

No longer blocked by Beddar's power, Vid could study his presence in the Force. This told him that, as far as Beddar was concerned, what he'd said was all true. Vidian Wol sighed as he saw his freedom slipping away from him.

"Is there anything I'm supposed to sign?" was all he asked. Jabban stood and the Stormtroopers entered his office.

Chapter 3 – I HAVE BEEN A'HUNTING. AND HUNTED I HAVE BEEN. THE PREY HAS SEEN THE HUNTERS BUT THE HUNTERS HAVE NOT SEEN …

It took three days of patient effort for Vidian Wol to pick up the scent of the Darkside user again. It was a "lucky" find, even then, if the word "luck" can be applied when dealing with the Force. His quarry was trying to keep hidden, but he was inexplicably inept at it, as though he'd lived in an environment where such skills had never been required of him before. Strong though he was, he was an amateur in the arts of hiding and finding compared to Vidian. Vid spotted him in the vicinity of their last contact, crossing a connecting walkway in the high-lower level. In spite of the Darksider's poor control of his shielding, Vid tailed him with the utmost caution. His blaster and dagger would almost surely be inadequate if this quarry spotted his presence and turned on him.

The Darksider led him to another building of mixed commercial and residential use, through some decidedly dangerous areas and up several levels by turbo-lift to a dwelling section owned by a private leasing company. An electronics tap, a tool left over from his career as an Investigator and small enough to fit in a pocket gave Vid the floor number. He then walked the halls until he picked up on the target's Force signature and tracked him to the room from which the sensations emanated most strongly. The building company's client registry listed the apartment the bearded man had entered as being leased to an, "Ardus Alamon". Vid recorded the name and location then left before his inquiries triggered alarms in the man's sense of the Force. But, cautious as he had tried to be, his precautions were not enough

"Never underestimate the paranoia of a fugitive", Beddar had taught them. "Being hunted makes them suspicious of every face and every shadow. Frown and they think you are an enemy. Smile and they think that you are trying to lull them into a vulnerable state. Show nothing and they will believe that you are hiding your true intentions. It is impossible to approach them without raising suspicion when they are already suspicious of everyone who approaches them. You cannot fool them because they already assume that you are trying to fool them. Of course, in our case, it isn't really paranoia because we really are out to get them … it doesn't matter. The end result is the same. They are on guard against you."

"The important thing to do is to recognize this and assume they suspect you. Assume they may try to track you or trap you or turn on you for no apparent reason. This is the way of hunters and the hunted. In ways they are the same. Always assume that your prey is hunting for you, just as you are hunting for them … it is very likely true."

Vid caught the same tram he had ridden on before. This time it was earlier in the day and the other passengers were mostly students and office workers, servants on errands and a smattering of housewives going shopping or to meet up with friends. He detected his tail soon after boarding, a female essence, a hunter's essence, intent on not being noticed by him and failing because Vidian had learned Beddar's lesson … the advantage of the experienced hunter perhaps. Or it might be that he was an experienced hunter precisely because he had learned Beddar's lesson and those who hadn't did not last long enough to become experienced.

Whatever the case, with so many females on the tram, he couldn't tell which one was hunting him. He didn't dare to probe too strongly, it would have alerted her to his awareness of a threat and if she attacked him, his mission could fail and other innocents would suffer. His one advantage appeared to be that this female, like the male he'd tracked before, seemed powerful but inexperienced in the art he excelled in. His best option was to use that advantage to lose her before she decided he wasn't worth keeping alive.

Though she and the male could probably tell that he wasn't strong enough to be a direct threat to them, they wouldn't know yet if he might be working with others, like the Jedi or Corruscant Security. That thought led to an idea and Vid gave up stealth for the moment to expand his awareness to its maximum. He picked up a few weak presences in the vicinity of the next stop on the tram's route, but not what he was looking for. In response to his surge of presence, the woman blocked her presence more completely, cutting back Vid's ability to read her, but at the same time, cutting back her ability to read Vid's intentions, a side-effect he hadn't planned on but put to his advantage. It was time to "play the skifter card" as Beddar had called it.

A "skifter" was a wild card used in Sabac, that could change values without warning. It was a "gamblers gamble" to rely on a skifter, but it was said that some of the best gamblers made use of it. In Commander Beddar's use, "playing the skifter card" consisted of acting without a sense of the Force's guidance, but trusting the Force to guide you as you acted … or at least try to guide you. In this instance, Vidian would assume that the Force had led him to think about finding a Jedi as a way to guide him to look for one at the moment when one was available to help him. That meant the Force wanted him to find the Jedi that would be somewhere near the next stop.

He assumed that the Darkside woman was ready to kill him at the first opportunity to do so and get away. Countering that inclination, he could tell by the "feel" of her Force presence that she still assumed that someone of his low power would never hunt someone like her partner alone, without help and she still hoped he would lead her to his confederates . Trying to lose her or running to the police would tell her the hunt was over and might trigger her decision to end his life. Since he was alone and she had already identified him and could track him in the Force, his only hope of escaping death at her hands was to find a Jedi or someone else of a level of power strong enough to obscure his own presence from her perception. He trusted that he could masque his presence better than this woman could, but not while she knew what he felt like and where to look for him. The distraction of a strong Force user might break her contact with him long enough for him to put up new barriers, leaving her hunting blindly. She'd search, but he would be hidden and she wouldn't know where to find him again. And if this didn't work … he'd have to try to get the Jedi's attention and hope, ironically for a Jedi rescue.

As the hover-tram pulled up to the next platform, Vid summoned up memories of his old comrades and let his excitement show before he exited as fast and efficiently as he could. It was a ruse to mimic how he would appear to her if he was going to meet fellow enemies of hers she'd want to know about.

He sensed the void area that marked the woman's shielding as she got off the tram behind him.

Once on the platform, with his senses still extended he could feel what he was looking for. Many levels below him, as expected, someone powerful was preparing to use the Force in battle and making no effort to hide their presence. All Vidian had to do now was draw the woman close enough to the Jedi that his own presence would be hidden once he resumed his own shielding. He looked about while probing with the Force and was attracted by a small group that seemed to be two women and a child. One of the women was his predator. She was trying to appear as present as a normal person would instead of simply blocking her presence altogether. It was the kind of ploy that might explain why she was able to get so close to Vid in the first place, without being detected. He guessed that she must have started stalking him somewhere back in Alamon's building and gave her credit for getting on the tram with him before he noticed her. Close up, with a chance to study her directly, her effort at disguise fell apart leaving a blurred impression like a smudged drawing.

Visually he saw a woman in her early twenties with dark hair tied back and looped in braids that would keep it out of her eyes, modestly fashionable and athletic-looking with a face that would not be called "unattractive" but not quite "pretty" either. A loose brown jacket worn over a green dress was enough to give ample protection for hidden weapons while her ankle-hugging soft-soled boots would give her speed and traction if needed.

Vid walked to the nearest turbo-lift and checked the destination menu in its waiting area. He scrolled quickly through the listings below this level until he came upon a police warning, "Access blocked due to police activity." That would be near the level where the Jedi was sending out ripples in the Force. At this distance and with the distraction of many living people between them, Vid could barely detect him. He hoped that he was the better at this and that his pursuer could not. Vid picked a cosmetic company's business office about eight levels above the action and opened their heading for further information. While he pretended to study it, he pressed the button to summon one of the cars. He waited, keeping the heading open and when the first car arrived, he boarded it without closing the menu. He wanted her to follow him, but not so closely that it would be too hard to lose her. The false destination was an old trick from Beddar's Hunters, giving the Jedi that was on to you a false confidence that they knew where you were going and didn't need to follow you as tightly

As he fell below the level of the hover-tram platform he could sense the woman's doubt. As she would see it, he was either careless or intentionally leading her into an ambush. It was neither and he let his lack of intent to do her immediate harm show in his effect on the Force. Hunting required discipline and trickery refined to an art form. The slow-witted prey was easily eliminated. Smart prey required a smarter hunter. If he acted fast enough, he could end up with the identities and dwellings of two Darkside users to turn over to the Jedi instead of just one and that would better fit the plans he was forming. Tracking one Darksider could be a fluke, but tracking two would be proof of his ability and lend credibility to the proposal he was hoping to offer.

He'd started out just indignant that a Darksider had so casually killed the spacer next to him to hide his presence. But that indignation had grown into a bigger idea, one he felt confident would finally lay the demons of his conscience to rest. That meant turning the tables on his current pursuer. For now she was the hunter, but soon he'd take that role away from her.

As he drew closer to the Jedi, Vid could pick up more detail of what he was engaged in. It wasn't yet a fight, but the prelude maneuvering and isolated violence that might erupt into all-out fighting at any moment. The Jedi was a Bothan or Shistaven or one of the other dozen or more caninoid species common in many parts of the galaxy … most likely a Bothan he thought. Vid could sense others involved … most likely a police raid on some criminal organization. A larger disturbance at a greater distance was probably another force of police performing a "drive", planning to trick their quarry into fleeing into an ambush by the "netting team". Every now and then the distinctive ending of a life punctuated the noise of emotions, sometimes as a shocked scream of panic, sometimes as a shudder of surrender to the inevitable.

From experience vid knew that what to his trained senses was still a dim and distant, if readable event, would be just mild static to most Force adepts and he hoped this woman would be no exception. He began to hope that he could lure his pursuer closer to the Jedi and hope for the explosion of energy that would come if the Jedi was actually pressed to defend himself. But the woman would need to be well within the range of that storm if this maneuver was going to work.

Racing past the "Beautiful You" cosmetic company's doors, Vidian took a stair way downward, leaping whole flights at a time, then cut back toward the turbo-lift shaft, putting himself between the Jedi and the point where the Darksider woman was about to get out of the lift.

Vid was startled when the second turbo lift car didn't stop at the floor he'd exited on. It continued to the same floor he was on, several levels lower. Vid could feel the cold determination emanating from her. She was no longer content to pursue from a distance. Now she was closing for the kill at a rapid pace.

Vid retreated back toward the stairwell and continued his descent, but with all of the speed of desperation and long training he could muster, he was still an aging man and no match for the woman's youth and power. She was only a level and a half above him when Vid gave up and grabbed the first hiding place he could find, an empty maze of rooms just off the stairwell. He was just starting to close down his presence in the Force when the hoped for obstruction finally came in a flaring of rapidly shifting pulses of disturbance in the Force … the Jedi below was fighting furiously and from Vidian's angle, he could feel his pursuer suddenly pull to a halt and guard her own emanations.

The experienced Vidian Wol could imagine her thoughts … Had she misread her quarry? Was he stronger than he'd seemed or was he just bait in a trap set for someone like her? Her reaction was predictable. She froze, cutting back her perceivable presence as much as possible while keeping a passive sensitivity, trying to sort what was her intended prey from the blaring fluctuations of the fighting not far away.

This was Vid's chance, he moved horizontally to a turbo-lift shaft further off than the one he and the woman had ridden. He took it up a dozen levels and then returned to the original shaft. He pried open a utility door with his dagger and crawled inside. Invisible to the casual passerby. He too was now blinded by the same Jedi interference. He couldn't sense the Darksider woman anymore, but he knew where she was and would sense her once the Jedi grew less active and she started to move again. The Jedi finished his battle and faded rapidly from Vidian's perceptions. But the woman was smart. She either had fled or continued to remain frozen, giving off little if any sign of her presence.

Another hour passed during which Vidian's confidence began to suffer. Was she still there, being cautious? Had she detected his move and was even then sneaking up on him with a greater level of disguise or shielding? Or had the Force led her to his likely exit route where she was setting up an ambush?

Beddar called this, "The Patience Game".

"Victory goes to whoever has the most discipline. They are stronger than you. So you have to be the one with the most discipline. If you try to sneak off, your movement will make you more visible. If you try to find them by expanding your sense of the Force, you will make yourself more visible. If you give up and just try to hide by closing yourself off more, you may let them get away or you may let them sneak up on you. If you let doubt become fear and you let fear grow inside you, eventually your fear will register in the Force and they will find you. Your only choice is to maintain your position, maintain the level of connection to the Force that you thought would be adequate but safe and wait them out. Believe in yourself and in your ability … and let them be the careless one or the one who has growing doubts. To help with this I have a game to teach you that will help you keep your focus and maintain your level of connection. It's what I used when I penetrated the Jedi Temple …"

The "game" consisted of imagining two parallel walls with an empty space between. In that space he was taught to imagine himself as a rectangular block, long enough to cover the physical area he wanted to remain aware of. One wall marked an increase in Force connectivity and the other a decrease. The goal was to continually shift the block between the two walls without ever touching either one and without ever moving the block so much it didn't cover the physical world area he wanted to be aware of. He could turn the block in any direction, make it larger or smaller as long as it still kept him aware of the area he was watching and didn't touch either wall. It took many hours to get comfortable with positioning the block to cover a space in the physical world and with maintaining and moving the block. It was an exercise that, particularly the "Finders" continued to practice on a weekly basis. Vidian hadn't practiced in more than 50 years, but the skill came back to him as he crouched in his hiding place. It kept him focused and distracted him from the doubts that naturally crept into his mind again and again.

The Darksider woman made her next move, shifting laterally at a casual pace, she traveled about 400 meters and then froze going dark again, watching for any pursuers.

Vidian stayed where he was. He estimated that she had moved as far as her effective range for sensing would allow and still enable her to cover her previous location.

There is no real limit to the distance over which a Force user could sense something. In theory, a strong enough user could send and receive messages with people on the other side of the galaxy, (fables said that Jedi Grand Master Skywalker had done this and Grand Master Yoda before him.) But as with all perceptions, distance magnified the scale of background being included in a sensor's focus. An adept in the Force might pick out anyone at close range and someone they knew well at long range, but the greater the distance the more people they would need to pick any particular person out from among. At this point, because he had previously sensed the Darksider's location and because he was more experienced and maybe more powerful in this particular craft, Vidian Wol's ability to track the Darksider was several times greater that her ability to track him. It was the ability to work with and take advantage of such differences that could give the weaker, but more experienced hunter the edge needed.

The woman remained in her new position about another half an hour. She ended it abruptly in a burst of speed, ascending upward through the building at a pace neither Vid nor anyone else with inferior Force powers could match. It was a good strategy, but it was easy for Vid to move with her at a distance that kept him out of her range and her within his.

She settled into a new watching position from a vantage point much higher in the city's landscape in a tapcaf in the external façade of the next building over, a few levels above the floor the hover-tram platform was on. From there, if anyone tried to follow her, chances were good that she would sense their approach as they passed from one building to the other. She had craftily figured out how to lessen the background noise that Vid had been using against her.

Vid kept tracking her in the Force as he shifted his position to a nearby vehicle rental agency. She'd moved up to flight levels and he anticipated that her next move might be to use a cab or steal a speeder to open a greater distance with her lost quarry turned potential hunter. At the rental agency Vid paid more than he should have for a 'Del-lite 2556' speederbike, a good pursuit machine, maneuverable, compact and fast on a straight course, if not very good for long-term reliability.

Next he needed a place to park where he could keep track of the woman when she gave up the hunt. He found it just below sunshine level, a little beyond her range, but she would be well within his. However, to get there discretely, he had to swing wide and approach from the other side of the building and that meant passing briefly beyond the reliable range of his senses for several minutes. He had no choice. He sensed that she would move soon and he needed to be in position when she did.

As he drove the speederbike along a lower roadway, drawing back into range, he was startled almost into a panicked mistake as he found that she had left the tapcaf and was coming closer at a rapid pace. Stopping the bike, Vidian bolstered his camouflage and was relieved to detect that she was not on course to intercept him. She was traveling vertically past his position more than 400 meters away, using the same turbo-lift they'd both ridden before. She was shielded still, but her emotions leaked through like a hot ember of hate and something new … a flavor that teased at some memory of Vid's … something he'd felt long before. It was feeling of immanent triumph, but sickly sweet like the scent of decay, not just Dark, but something beyond that.

Suddenly the woman reached her goal and for a moment her emotions quieted … then burst out in a bright flame that rivaled what he'd felt from the Jedi, hours before. Death cried out in the Force, several voices lamenting their fates. And then silence returned.

In shock, Vid realized what this meant. Innocent people had died in the woman's fury, a fury that Vid had been instrumental in fueling. He felt her satiation with horror and a memory flitted across his mind's-eye, a man in a black masque … the Sith Lord! The oily touch, the sickly feel, the half insane lust for control, it had been almost sixty years since Vidian had felt anything like it …

But he couldn't dwell on that now. The woman was moving fast again, drawing nearer, then passing on her way to a hover-landing near the tram platform. She waited briefly, then was on the move again, rising into the air, clearly in a cab or other vehicle. Police Droids were just arriving as Vidian left his underground post and followed the woman's trail in the Force. It was late afternoon and traffic was becoming thicker. But the woman had abandoned stealth, her thoughts roiling between frustration at Vid's escape, satisfaction in the relief that killing had brought her and a vengeful resentment for the Jedi she had come so close to blundering into. The strength of these emotions made her easy to follow from that point on. He trailed her to a high mid-level floor just a kilometer from where he lived and to a suite registered under the name, "Nomi Tuvellian".

Back in his own apartment he watched the holonews as he ate a quick dinner and tried to decide what would be the best way to approach the Jedi. In the past he could have just called the Temple anonymously. That option had been gone since the siege of the Temple by Mandoloran commandos. Now he would need to contact them in person and that would mean questions and explanations. It also meant that he would have to tell them about the role he played in Emperor Palpatine's "Jedi Purge". He had anticipated that as he developed his plan to clear his conscience of its burden of guilt, but oddly, the actual decision to confess bothered him less than he thought it would. He took out his memento. As it lay in his hands, the decision seemed right to him.

He was packing a few things for the trip to the Government District when a report on the holonews drew his attention …

"A fourth victim of the shooting incident at the sales office of the 'Beautiful You' Company has died of his wounds at Du-Nach Hospital. District police had hoped that the manager of the office might recover and provide clues as to the assailant's motives in this unexplained attack. Security cams at the scene have been of no help so far. Police report that they were apparently disabled by some sort of a jamming device just prior to the assault. Investigators are looking into … "

Vidian went to the refresher to splash some water on his face. But he ended up slowing to a halt as soon as he looked into the mirror. He had not expected this consequence of his maneuvers … who would have? He'd never actually entered the cosmetics company's doors or spoken to any of its personnel. He couldn't imagine how the Darkside woman had thought that this was anything more than a misdirection on his part … and then it occurred to him that she might have understood that perfectly well, but the innocence of the people in that office played no part in her thinking. She had killed … not just killed, but returned to kill those people for no better reason than that Vidian Wol would see the news report and know he had led her to them!

"S-i-t-h …" The ancient name slithered through his teeth.

Vid understood that they considered him a real threat now. The "Bearded Man", Ardus Alamon had casually killed that spacer on the tram, just because he thought the man was prying. Now his accomplice, Nomi Tuvellian had killed four more people, just to send a message. These monsters would not stop seeking him until he too was eliminated and with Tuvellian living so near, it was inevitable that eventually the Force would lead her to him … maybe very soon. He still had his ability to sense them coming. If he could maintain that around the clock, day after day, he could spot them coming and get away, but on whom would they take out their vitriol next?

A flash of memory came back to Vidian. He was nine years old, failing his tests as a youngling in the Jedi academy. A blond-haired human boy close to Vidian's age, but far removed from him in skill, a prodigy with his own apprenticeship already, approached Vid after a particularly frustrating class …

"Don't let these failures stop you. You may not be able to lift things, but you have an amazing ability at finding things and seeing how people feel. My Master says that the Sith place great importance on keeping things hidden, that they say hidden things have power. If that is so … then your power may be extra important, because you have the power to find and reveal things that are hidden."

The story of the massacre had given way to a report on a gang war in the Shale District and that to the Celebrity wedding of two famous vid-stars. The "trans-galactic report" was just starting when it was interrupted by a "Breaking Story!"

A child had been kidnapped in the neighboring district and the police were locked in a stand-off with the kidnapper holding the child and two elderly bi-standers hostage. News cams focused on an open-topped speeder surrounded by police speeders hemming it in. The cameras cut to a scene nearby where a police assault craft was moving into position above the stand-off. Suddenly a figure leaped out of the assault craft, hit the sloping curve of the building's top stories and began to slide down toward the stand-off scene, a Bothan in Jedi robes.

The Force nudged him. Vid Wol abandoned the luggage he was preparing, grabbed the memento lying on the bed and his com unit and headed out to where he'd left his rented hovercycle.

Chapter 4 – WE WENT TO GO A`HUNTING, BUT ALL THAT WE HAVE FOUND, IS WHILE WE WERE A`HUNTING, OUR PREY WAS NOT AROUND …

When Grand Master Skywalker determined that the time had come to move against Abeloth, the Korriban Sith and the anti-Jedi administration of Dyalla Isaard, as many Padawans as their Masters thought ready were elevated to Jedi Knighthood to help in facing the emergency. One of these was Enrik Voranna, the Bothan who had never seen Bothui. Enrik was not, however, among those who fought and sometimes died to free Corruscant of the invasion that most of its billions of inhabitants had no idea had taken place.

Voranna himself had played only a support role in the coup, helping to watch for counter moves in the Old Lakes District, in the part of Corruscant furthest from the center of government. It was that experience that led to his selection as one of several Jedi "Goodwill Ambassadors" seeking to help restore confidence and good will toward the Jedi Order after the damage done during Dyalla's administration and the subsequent announcement that the Jedi Order was moving its base of operations off of Corruscant.

Corran Horn was placed in charge of these ambassadors, reviewing and coordinating their actions as the need arose, as well as the process of abandoning the ancient Jedi Temple site, securing its files and treasures and moving what was wanted. Most of the Jedi involved in this outreach effort were operating as liaisons attached to the various district law enforcement organizations. In that capacity, all of them had offered significant assistance over the course of their four months of operations, performing rescues, subduing criminals, aiding investigations and more.

Early in the day Enrik had been asked to help a special-ops team in the neighboring district of Resorum-Pilos. The district's underground was split between clan-rebel and small-time crime-lord, Dodos the Hutt and a rising power in the underworld, an organization called "The Bright Jewels". The Jewels had been infringing on Dodos' territory and in response, he had been raising an army of hired thugs to move against the section chief of the Jewels, a Bith named Inkara Lob. The civil authorities were worried about this for a variety of reasons and decided to head-off the gang-war by breaking up Dodos' "army" before they could attack. Lob's force was still relatively weak and could be dealt with through warnings, but if Dodos took him out, the Bright Jewels would strike back with an even greater force and the situation could spiral out of control.

Police from the Old Lakes District provided the "hammer" attacking Dodos' people with non-lethal chemical weapons and lethal backup. The Resorum-Pilos police provided the "anvil", arresting those that fled, but prepared to fight if need be rather than let the criminals swarm into the business and residential levels above. The plan went well until the Resorum-Pilos detail was attacked by the core of Dodos' hired muscle, a band of mercenaries with heavy arms and body armor. Two officers were slain and more would have followed if Enrik hadn't been there to break up their charge and subdue the survivors. He had only been back in the Old Lakes District for a few hours when the current crisis began …

The security staff of a residential tower had spotted the abduction of a child in progress and responded. In the pursuit, one of their patrolmen had confronted the kidnapper and been wounded by blaster fire. The pursuit led to an upper level speeder-dock where, reacting to their security's request, Building Operations began closing the transparisteel gates to the landing pad, thwarting the criminal's intended escape. But this plan went wrong when a couple that lived in the building approached the landing in their open-top speeder and, finding the gates closing, brought their vehicle to a hover just off the landing. Seizing this opportunity, the kidnapper scooped up the three-year-old and darted through the remaining gap between the gates before they could close completely then leaped with the child into the back of the resident's speeder.

The building's Operations Control Office had already alerted the police and they arrived in time to block the speeder's escape routes before the criminal could order the driver at blaster-point to pull away. Not intending to be captured so easily, the kidnapper dropped the child onto the speeder's back seat then pulled and armed a military anti-personnel grenade.

When the call first came in, Special Operations Team 3 under Lieutenant Merischand Gorif was on standby and heading out, with Enrik Voranna hopping on at the last moment. Ten minutes later they arrived above the scene.

Brin Neuday, the team's marksman shook his head and pulled his rifle back into the assault-craft's open bay.

"I've got a shot, but if he drops that grenade into the cab, all of those people are dead."

Lieutenant Gorif pulled the sharpshooter back from the opening. The Quarren team leader turned to the Bothan beside him.

"Take a look, Jedi. See any possibilities?"

Enrik leaned out of the transport's bay and ran his eyes quickly over the scene. A hover cam zipped in close, filming the S.O. Team. Other cams held positions at a variety of locations nearby. Both above and below the scene dozens of police speeders enforced a "no-fly zone" around the hi-jacked speeder and the police vehicles cutting off its escape. Beyond the "no-fly" zone enforcers, scores of news vehicles and private on-lookers had formed a third hemisphere of hovering machines.

The hi-jacked vehicle was close to the landing bay, its transparisteel gate now completely closed. Enrik estimated that only a little more than one meter separated the vehicle from the building. A human male of middle years stood in the back seat of the speeder. In his right hand, nearest the building, he held something dark that Enrik agreed, could be a military grenade. In his left hand he brandished a blaster-pistol. The human child was now in the arms of an elderly Bothan female in the front passenger seat. The older Bothan male in the driver's seat was probably her husband. His movements suggested he might be plotting something. Enrik hoped he would wait.

The building was a cluster of massive glass-covered cylinders around a main cylinder with a transparent domed top that began sloping to its rounded peak twelve stories below the summit. The landing pad was set six stories below the peak the exterior glass-steel facade of the building still sloping outward several stories below the hi-jacked speeder.

After thirty seconds of looking Enrik said, "I can do this" and began a fast explanation of his plan.

The Quarren was a scarred and seasoned combat veteran who had seen Jedi in action before. He gave Enrik one good penetrating look and then said to the pilot, "Go to quiet mode. Take us in at about peak level and as close to the building as you can get."

The Bothan hit the transparisteel surface hard, letting his body absorb the impact. The Force helped, but any attempt to break his fall with his hands or feet might have led to a roll or a bounce that would have lessened his contact with the surface and risked launching him out into the air. Enrik had imagined the series of moves he'd need to perform, but not had time to rehearse them. He used the Force to keep contact with the slick transparasteel and slow his slide, but that was all he could manage at first. The impact had driven the air from his lungs and all he could do in the first seconds was fight for breath.

He was already moving fast, facing inward, when the first horizontal joint between two of the massive slabs of transparisteel raked him from toe to collarbone and almost sent him into free-fall.

His lungs re-expanded with air, but the friction of his slide was already starting to heat him through the thin protection of his robes and fur.

The next joint raked him even harder because he was using the Force to press his body against the surface. Every meter the slope got steeper and his slide grew faster and inertia was throwing him outward even as friction began to burn his skin and singe his fur, but he found some relief as he spun himself onto his back and head-downward putting a different side of his body in contact with the building's surface. Now facing outward, he could see the speeder fast approaching.

The next joint clawed his shoulders and back like a wild beast as he ignited his lightsaber.

The face of the kidnapper turned up toward him as he closed the distance. Another joint passed with less pain as Enrik struck out with both hands, one stabbed out with his lightsaber, slicing through the kidnapper's arm just outside of his elbow and cutting a vertical grove in the side of the speeder. With the other he focused the Force to pull the severed arm, its hand still clutching the grenade and drag it with him as he passed below the speeder.

He flung the arm away from him as his weapon arm continued its arc bringing the point of his blade against the next transparisteel window down. It shattered and he fell inward. Enrik's body following the shards of glass to crash on the flooring now exposed to the outside. Enrik hit the floor with the mass of glass, extinguishing his lightsaber as he broke his fall and rolled on his shoulders and back to a standing position inside an apartment suite.

Behind him the grenade exploded harmlessly at the same moment the Sullistan woman in the apartment began a high-pitched scream.

Enrik rolled his shoulders to try to shrug off some of the pain he felt. A Sullistan male rushed into the room holding a smashball bat, but froze at the sight of the Bothan covered with shining fragments that stood framed in his missing window. Enrik felt like he'd just taken a kicking from a Wookie, but he gave the Sullistans a bow with a flourish of his free hand and straightened again with a grin on his face.

"Enrik Voranna of the Jedi Order at your service! Please forward all complaints and bills for damage to District Security. This interruption was part of a police operation, now concluded. I'm sure that you can get all of your questions answered and see footage of the event on your local news station."

With that he walked past the frozen, slack-jawed Sullistans adding, "Very sorry for the intrusion … but I must be on my way!"

Chapter 5 – WHO WILL GO A'HUNTING AS I WILL HUNTING GO? WHO WILL BE THE HUNTED AS HUNTING WE MUST GO…

Naterus Gratt was mostly human, his left arm and the left side of his face was machine, a souvenier of an encounter with a Jedi Knight before the Clone War began. Like most of the trainers associated with Bessard's "Hunters Unit" he was dressed all in black. In his case this meant black combat boots, black combat fatigue pants and a black, short-sleeved, knit shirt that left the massive muscles of his human right arm in plain view. He was at least a week past "clean-shaven" and his equally black hair hung in greasy-looking curls down to his wide shoulders. His belt, a bandoleer across his bulging chest and holsters strapped at various points along his legs were festooned with hand weapons and blasters that made the silver metal lightsaber hanging at his waist look quaintly ornate in comparison. At a hand's width over two meters in height any weapons looked superfluous in comparison to the menace of his unadorned appearance.

Twenty-two "candidates" stood in a semblance of attention in a line near the edge of the practice-field while a dozen fully armored Stormtroopers looked on from flanking positions. All around the field behind them, other clones drilled and exercised in the black suits they wore under their armor. The sun was high, but a cool breeze kept the candidates from overheating in their orange shorts and sweatshirts. Craggy peaks of the Arran Mountains , the second highest range on the Imperial Garrison planet of Risena in the outer core gave the training field a dramatic backdrop. In the distance the "crump" "crump" sound of ordinance practice competed with the barking of the clone squads and platoons as their sergeants shouted orders.

"Not a one of you has the makings of a man-hunter from what I can see. But every one of you is supposed to have some power of tracking using the Force. We're going to find out if that's true. I am not a Jedi. But I have fought Jedi" … his hand flinched as though he was about to stroke the metallic side of his face with its round yellow-lensed eye … "and it is part of my contract to give you some sense of what you are going up against."

Suddenly he was standing over the prostrate form of the biggest of the males among the candidates. His attack had been almost too fast for Vidian's eyes to follow, even with the warning his senses gave him.

"That's your first example" said Gratt as he returned to his original position and the candidate regained his feet. "I am a man-hunter. I have killed a Jedi in one-on-one combat. I am the real thing you sorry rejects are just a shadow of. Lucky for you, as Darkside users go I am a big softy. I don't want to kill you just for taking up my time. But don't let that news make you think you can relax around me … I just haven't been paid to kill you. Irritate me and I'll do it for free."

Gratt did kill one of the candidates, Bores Kenobi, the same man he'd put on the ground on the first day. On the third day Bores sneered at Gratt during an exercise, but Vidian could tell that Gratt only used this as an excuse. He wanted to make an example of someone to shock the trainees into the reality of life and death in real-life operations. Vidian hated Gratt and took pleasure as he learned to out-maneuvering him in tracking exercises.

Gratt was a bounty-hunter by profession. He used his powers to track targets and that made him unusually well qualified to train the "Finders". He also trained the "Fighters", low-range Force users whose strong-point was combat. He killed two of them as well, but possibly for more recognizable reasons. Vidian was also a large man for a human and moderately skillful in combat use of the Force. At times, particularly when Gratt was working over some of the females, Vid was almost tempted to try to stop him. His self-restraint probably saved his life.

Naterus Gratt worked them hard, treated failures with punishment, seldom acknowledged success, frequently knocked them down physically just to "teach you that destruction can come to you anytime and anywhere." The training lasted six weeks at the end of which thirteen candidates in the program were dead and another one hundred and twenty had been eliminated from the program.

Three months into the Hunters operation they received news that Naterus Gratt had been killed in a fight on Rylos with a fugitive Padawan. To his surprise, the news made Vidian tear-up slightly. It was only years later that he understood how many times the harsh training Gratt had given them had kept himself and many of his comrades alive.

"Mysterious, sometimes are the ways of the Force." It was a phrase from one of Master Yoda's lessons when Vid was a "youngling" in the Temple.

Chapter 6 – I HAVE BEEN A'HUNTING. A HUNTER I HAVE BEEN. I HAVE BEEN A'FLEEING FOR THE HUNTED I HAVE BEEN …

Half an hour later, the child and Bothan couple rescued, the kidnapper on his way in restraints to the emergency medical center and the Sullistans still calling friends to tell them to tune in the news, Enrik and Lieutenant Gorif arrived at the precinct police station to make their reports. It was customary for the senior officer to give a verbal briefing to the Station Commander first, before he and Enrik worked together to compose the official report. Gorif waved toward his glassene enclosed office, indicating that Enrik should wait for him there.

"I'll be back very shortly", he promised.

After filling a mug with caf from the station dispenser, seasoning it with a pinch of red pepper, Voranna took a seat and called in his own brief report to his Jedi superior, Master Coran Horn. The pepper burned his tongue as he licked it from the golden fur on his upper lip and wiped his muzzle on his sleeve. He'd just finished when the office door slid open and two of the officers from one of the mobile patrol units that had participated in crowd control during the stand-off leaned in to congratulate the Jedi on his amazing rescue.

"Everything went smooth as synthsilk after you took the bomb out of the picture! The perp completely forgot about his blaster, he was so busy staring at what was left of his …"

The grinning officer was interrupted by the sounds of a commotion out in the reception area, only distortedly visible to Enrik through the glassene walls of two other intervening offices. A human male was speaking in a voice enhanced by a mild boost of Force energy while others shouted in reply almost as loudly.

"I don't know why I'm wasting time with you fools! There's a Jedi here somewhere! Let me talk to him! He'll understand!"

Other voices competed … "hold it!" "You can't go in there!" "Stop him!"

Enrik had just stood up and turned in their direction to get a better look when he felt a ripple in the Force and the shouting rose to a cacophony.

Alerted to potential danger, Enrik ducked past the two officers still rooted in the doorway and stepped into the exterior corridor in a low guard position, his hand on the hilt of his lightsaber, ears pulled back and the russet crest between them that trailed along his neck bristling. Down the corridor to the reception area, three officers were staggering back to their feet and reaching for their side arms.

Behind them stood a tall, lean human male with short white hair and beard, his hands held palms out in front of him. He was dressed in a business suite of silver gray and looked nothing like the angry hoodlum or madman Enrik had expected. Enrik could sense that his control of the Force was not strong, enough to shove people out of his way, but not much more. He immediately locked his eyes on Enrik's, but lowered his hands and appeared to relax, letting his hold on the Force slip away. A cloud of fear and reddened eyes that watered as he stood there made the Jedi remain cautious, but as he saw the police begin to draw their weapons he called out.

"Wait!" putting compulsion in his voice, "Don't do that. Your weapons aren't needed."

The stranger pointed a finger at Enrik.

"You … Bothan! You're the Jedi. My name is Vidian Wol. I've come to confess and make amends!"

Enrik relaxed and drew himself up to his normal height.

"What have you done? What do you want to confess?" he asked putting a soothing touch into his words.

The man cringed as if struck, but straightened again and looked Enrik in the eye.

"Jedi …" he rasped. "I killed them … scores of them! And I have come to make amends!"

Tears flowed down his cheek.

Someone snickered, but the humor died in the presence of Enrik's grim countenance. The man wasn't mad, but what he was saying was. He had some power with the Force, but not enough to have been likely to have killed one Jedi, let alone scores of them … and there had been no such mass killing of Jedi since …

There was something wrong. The force told him that the man spoke the truth … but that there was more to the truth …

The old man started to reach into his jacket and on-looking police began to reach for their weapons again. He slowly pulled out a long object of deep yellow metal and dark brown wood and held out on the open palm of his hand the hilt of a lightsaber.

"Here is proof. This belonged to a Jedi Master. I took it when I killed him."

Chapter 7 – WHO WILL BE MY HUNTERS? WHO WILL HUNT FOR ME? WHO WILL BE MY HUNTERS? AS FROM THE HUNT I FLEE …

Eighty-three final candidates stood at 'parade rest' in the semi-dark hall in four lines of twenty-one, twenty, twenty-two and twenty-one. Flanking them on all sides stood white armored Stormtroopers and gray-clad officers. Vidian Wol was in the third row, sixth from the left. All of them but four were "young, fit and human." One of the exceptions, a green Twilek woman named, Luni Huel, stood directly in front of him, her normally active lekku dead still. She had already passed. Several in each of the first two lines now knelt on one knee, having failed their final inspection. Three, one in the first line and two in the second lay dead. No explanation had been given.

At the entrance end of the room, the Emperor was represented by a single Imperial Guardsman in a red cape and armor. A vibro-pike stood at his left, butt-end resting on the polished black stone of the floor.

Commander Beddar and two aides stood in black uniforms to the front-left of the candidate ranks. He kept his features impassive, but in the Force Vidian could read relief and satisfaction that so many of his recruits were passing.

This was the last formal review for the Imperial Hunters Unit. Those who passed would begin setting up operations in their new headquarters the following morning. Those who failed … No one had informed the candidates what fate awaited them.

The judge in this final inspection was an official unknown to any of them, a tall humanoid in black armor and cape, his face hidden in a masked helmet, a lightsaber at his belt and a sense of power in the Force that rivaled even Master Yoda's. Most unsettling in his physical presentation was the slow, rhythmic gasp of intake and hiss of out-gas of the mechanical respiration system built into his armor. It was the loudest sound in the hall. He or it had finished the second row and was beginning to walk the length of the third. As he reached each candidate he would stop in front of them and say, "Yes", "No" or nothing at all. In front of the three candidates that lay dead, he had said nothing, but raised one hand, focusing the Force to crush their throats.

"No."

The first candidate in Vidian's row dropped to one knee.

"No."

The next candidate took a knee, bowing.

"Yes"

A male "Fighter" named Tory.

"Yes"

A female "Finder" named Fila.

"Yes."

A male "Fighter" named Davit. Vid could hear his relieved exhalation between the intake and exhale of the black-caped figure.

And then he came to Vid.

Beneath his body-suit and from his scalp, tiny rivulets of perspiration ran tickling down Vidian's skin. His eyes were burned by it, but he dared not blink. The black gauntleted hand of the judge began to rise. Frozen, Vid realized that he was about to die and he knew why.

Thoughts of hatred toward the Emperor flooded his mind. The figure in black must have Vid's skill of reading the Force and see this. But the thoughts weren't Vidian's. They came from his right, from someone with the skill of manipulating the ripples in the Force.

"Your power to deceive is impressive. It might have been of use if you had not been so foolish as to use it on me."

Vid heard the sounds of someone choking, followed by a grinding "crunch!" The girl on Vid's right collapsed onto the floor, falling against his right leg.

"Yes" said the creature and he moved on.

A smell of urine rose from the body, but all Vid could think was, "I am alive!"

Chapter 8 – WHEN WE GO A'HUNTING, WILL YOU HUNT WITH ME? OR WHEN YOU GO A'HUNTING, WILL YOU HUNT FOR ME …

Coran Horn, a hard-looking man with graying hair and beard looked up from the lightsaber in his lap to stare with a scowl into Vidian Wol's eyes. The Jedi Master's feats were legendary, the evil men and monsters he had killed almost beyond numbering and the impossible odds and hopeless situations he had conquered almost as many. Vid was well aware that he was sitting within reach of one of the most dangerous and powerful beings in the galaxy and he had just finished telling him the story of his time as a hunter and killer of Jedi.

They sat in gathered chairs in a residential apartment in the Government District. Through the transparisteel window the still scarred edifice of the Jedi Temple dominated the city-scape. To Coran's right, the Bothan Jedi, Enrik Voranna looked slight and youthful in comparison. Three other Jedi sat nearby. An Arconian and two humans. One of these was a girl still in her teens with the smooth beauty of youth. She reminded Vid of his granddaughter. A pall of sadness wrapped them all as Vidian continued.

"… there were still several dozen of them around. We estimate at least one hundred escaped the initial battle in the Temple itself and there must have been nearly that many spread out around the planet. Of course … most of those were students and Padawans … and some younglings. But we had alerts to watch for several Masters and dozens of Knights that were still unaccounted for. Yoda and Obiwan Kenobi were at the top of that list, but Ars-Moselet wasn't on the list at all. He was a surprise."

"Many of those students and Padawans were incredibly dangerous. They started their training younger then. I saw one girl, about ten years old, take down five clone Troopers before they overwhelmed her. Those were original, Kamino clones too …"

Vidian took a sip of water from his glass on the serving table nearby. As he did so he sampled the feelings his account had stimulated. He was surprised to find only grief around him, no anger, no indignant condemnation, no emotional surge calling for revenge. Voranna had apparently succeeded in convincing them that Vidian really was but one of billions of soldiers that had the misfortune of serving on the wrong side in a war that took place before most of these people were born. Indeed, as he wiped his eyes again, Vid realized that he was the only one weeping. If only Voranna could convince him of his own innocence … But Vidian had lived these events and he knew better. He might achieve acceptance, but never innocence. That was not his to claim.

"Our teams only worked on Curruscant and we weren't the only ones. Isaard had a company of real, full-powered adepts as well. We had no idea where they came from or how they had been recruited. Most of them worked alone though, and their numbers fell off rapidly … so did ours. We ended up with only enough to make up one team … we-we started out with four … I think that only about twelve survived to the end of the second year and we were decommissioned after that … that would be three years after the Temple Battle … I'm probably the only one left today."

"And then there were the clones. There was always a supply of them, until near the end. By then they had started to be replaced by the new recruits, but I know there were still lots of them around. No one I know of kept track of how many clones we lost … at least a thousand. Some of them were decent fellows …"

Wol trailed off into silence. The sun was setting and artificial lights were beginning to obscure the view of the endless city they illuminated. It was a smaller, less lofty version of the city Vidian remembered from his youth … too many bombardments and invasions had occurred since then and all of these years later, the planet-city was still not fully recovered from the transforming of the Yhuzon Vong.

"Why haven't you come out with this story before?"

It was the first question Horn had asked since Vid's confession had begun.

"I was ashamed. Shouldn't I have been? Ashamed of what I'd done … what we had done … what we had become. You Jedi lead better lives, but can you imagine the burden people like me bore … knowing we had … knowing only later that we had sided with something evil! Knowing we had killed good people to suit the desires of monsters … can you imagine the guilt that we … that I have carried through all of these years? Even after joining the Rebellion, even after the Emperor's fall … even with the amnesty … the wounds of guilt never healed for a lot of people. A lot of them just shut off that part of their past … I suppose I did too … or tried to. There was just never a good reason to tell anyone about it … until now."

A few heads raised at this. Only Enrik had heard about the most recent events.

"Tell them the rest."

Vidian Wol began with seeing his family off at the spaceport and related the story of the four days since.

"The Sith were defeated", said Oran Karris, a young human male sitting in with the Arconian, Abarim Bath and his Padawan, Alina Imaprov, the young human girl. Knowing quick action would be needed, Enrik had suggested that Coran gather a team and these were the three available. Karris was on the same assignment as Voranna, in a different district. He'd been treated for a blaster wound and just released for return to duty. Bath and Imaprov were just passing through, having completed an investigation in the Inner Core.

"Those that survived were hunted down or fled the planet."

"Not all", said Wol with conviction. "Or maybe these came later … as infiltrators."

"We don't need to question this", said Bath. "I can tell that this man's claim about some sense of the Force is true and I sense no deceit in his story. It doesn't make me want to trust him. But …" here the Arconian looked intently at Wol, "… you say you have names and addresses. If this is true we can verify it easily enough."

"But if we approach them, they may bolt", argued Oran Karras. "And then we'll never be sure. If these are Sith, they'll be wary and watching."

"I can verify their presence before they can sense mine", said Wol. "It is … my skill and I've spent a lifetime developing it. I can at least sense the woman before she senses me. If you have more Jedi to call on, you can surround them before the Force warns them of your presence and intent."

"There are only three more Jedi Knights on the planet right now", said Coran. "And I don't want to call them away from their current duties. The Jedi at the Temple are Researchers and I wouldn't want to pit them against Sith Spears."

"But we need to work with the authorities on this. Relations are too … tenuous to do otherwise. They can provide the backup we need and their participation could have political advantages."

"I am inclined to trust this man. Will the rest of you come with me?"

Enrik, Abarim and Alina assented immediately.

"Well … I'm not going to let you go without my help", added Oran, somewhat more hesitantly.

Horn lifted the old lightsaber from his lap and held it out to Vidian Wol.

"I don't have the skill to use it", said Wol.

"Take it", answered Coran Horn. "We each make our own and none of us knew the maker of this one. Keep it to remember him and to remember who you were. There is still darkness about you, Vidian Wol. It is faint and buried deep, but I think that you and this weapon may yet have some connection and some role yet to play out. Let this remind you that once, you did fall to the Darkside and this Kamit Ars-Moselet helped you to find the Light again."

Vid took the lightsaber in his hand as Horn continued, "There are two ways to walk the road into Darkness. For the strong it is the temptation to dominate others, subordinating their sentience to one's own, usually starting with good intentions and the thought that you are saving them by taking control over a threat they are less able to understand or deal with. The other path lies in the willingness to surrender, to subordinate one's sentience to someone they see as stronger or wiser or maybe just more successful. Nature gives us our own minds, our own judgments and our own goals and it is as great a crime against nature to surrender that to another as it is to take that from another. You have walked that path before. Remember to never walk it again."

Chapter 9 – I WILL BRING THE ARROWS, IF YOU WILL BRING THE BOW, OUT INTO THE WILDLANDS, A`HUNTING WE WILL GO …

Vidian Wol stretched his senses into the darkness that lay before him. Such complete lack of light was almost a new experience for him on this planet that, when not lit by its star, was lit by the trillion glowlamps that shone through every night. To find such utter darkness on Corruscant one had to either seal oneself in an unlit room, or travel as he and Mors Calby had done, into the abandoned levels and areas deep beneath the planet's artificial surface. This was a region of colorless things with no eyes and of only the most desperate rejects and fugitives from the crowded world above.

So far Team Three had been plagued by failure. They had been out twice following what seemed like good intel. But both times they had come up empty-handed. This was Team Three's third hunt. It was based on rumors of sightings from the paid and the pain-wracked lips of informants that were themselves lost creatures of the underworld where ancient and jury-rigged illumination still survived. Few would risk a hiding place among these ancient tunnels and forgotten architecture in the fragmented mazes between the foundations of towers kilometers wide and kilometers high. The survival of any not born to this level required strength in numbers and weaponry … or the ability to sense pattern in the darkness and the movements of the strange creatures that made this their home. It was a logical place for a fugitive Jedi to hide, awaiting their chance to escape.

The last dim glowlamp was far behind with the rest of the team and their Stormtrooper support. But to Vidian and Mors the pitch-black before them was far from empty. The stone work and steel before them was covered with life, though most of it no bigger than the tiny mites living in a Nerf's ear. Deep in this land beneath the surface, with few distractions from larger creatures, Force-users with the sensitivities of Vid and Mors could trace the surfaces of the inert structures almost as well as if they were using lamps, better, because the world they perceived was one of transparent shapes over and under which the tiny life-forms crawled or rested.

Once, centuries before, this area had been filled with people and their dwellings and the machinery that serviced those dwellings. Now, the levels below this were reduced to permacrete rubble, but walls and floors and doorways on this level still remained in the spaces between the foundations of more recent construction. It was the Jedi's instinct that this abandoned level afforded a hiding place free of inquiring eyes and ears, but his instincts had betrayed him. For there was a consistency in the geometric distribution of the subsurface life. They lived on vertical and horizontal planes and the only rounded surfaces were those of forgotten pipes and conduits. There was no place for the nearly spherical form of the force-shield that masked the Jedi's presence. Finding this void was like finding a sign proclaiming, "a Jedi hides within".

Of course, a defense that blinds the user to danger approaching from outside would be a foolish thing. Tiny gaps in the pseudo-structure of the sphere allowed thin filaments of sensory consciousness to reach beyond the blind, almost invisible "feelers" of Force-awareness to warn of an enemy's approach. Were Vid and Mors other Jedi or "Dark-Jedi", even Sith, this system might have worked. Such powerful Force-users would have relied upon their power and radiated it and been sensed by these feelers as they drew near. But these weren't Jedi. They were "Beddar's Hunters". Like the blind man who develops the acuity of their other senses to compensate, Jaban Beddar taught these "weak" Force-users to focus on and develop the strongest of the abilities their low midi-choline counts gave them.

Taken to the Temple as an infant, Beddar was already eleven years old when the Masters decided he would never overcome his lack of sufficient progress. Like many before him he was dropped from Jedi training, but for Jaban this rejection was something he would never forgive. Beddar was good at blocking the Force-senses of others, a "Blocker", a specialist that could allow a team to get close to a Force-user without risk of being detected. But no one wanted what he could do … until Emperor Palpatine saw him as a means for freeing up more valuable assets for other assignments.

"Team contacted, location given," signaled Mors using finger-to-palm signing.

"Target stable" replied Vidian.

Then he risked a mouth –to-ear whisper, "Non-human, male Dresselian, I think."

"Agreed," replied Mors using sign. "Strong", he added.

The two settled into silent waiting mode, maintaining the barest contact with the life in the vicinity of the Dresselian's shield. If he moved, they would be alerted and would warn the others.

The rest of the team joined them after a short wait, accompanied by twenty-five Stormtroopers.

They sensed a reaction from the Dresselian immediately. The edges of his shield contracted and the feelers he'd put out expanded. But it was already too late. A full platoon of Stormtroopers was already moving in from the opposite side of the Jedi, and fanning out to drive him into the Hunter Team's arms.

For these operations the Clones were kitted-out with light, flat-gray armor and special headgear designed to give them speed and minimum visibility.

The main contact would be with the Team's "Fighters Squad". They wore armor reinforced with rods of rare Beskar steel and carried poniards made of even rarer Cortosis metal, both capable of resisting a lightsaber's focused energy. They could drop the poniard in favor of a blaster if desired but their main defense lay in a Beskar-plated target shield strapped to their off-arm.

These were all expert fighters, Team Three's on this hunt were Ard Nahana, a burly professional fist-fighter and Tulala Sky, a Twilek trained as a Priestess in the Nuan-Ti Shrine's "Guardian Sect". Their job was to engage and slow the Jedi while the Stormtroopers used coordinated fire to penetrate their defenses and bring them down. They were backed by a third Fighter, Ruus Hammer and two Blockers who would try to interfere with the Jedi's connection to the Force, Dor Kelles and Ray Hyarbin. Kelles led the Hunters Team and the Stormtroopers were led by a Clone Sergeant named, "Wrecker" and the whole operation was headed by a Naval Lieutenant attached to Imperial Security, Jon Antorian.

A fourth class of Specialist was available "Boosters". Boosters could project additional Force power to another user nearby. But there were only two of them and they were being saved for operations where full Jedi Knights or Masters were suspected.

The ambush or "kill team" was under the cover of the two Blockers, Kelles and Hyarbin. With their skill, the ambush was invisible to the Jedi as he dropped his shield and started moving away from the Clone's "drive team".

"Target approaching", signaled Mors.

As the fugitive approached the hidden ambush the Stormtroopers moved to flanking positions with the two Blockers. The three Fighters spread out over the expected "encounter-point", a larger space at the intersection of five corridors, and the two Finders, Vidian and Mors pulled back to keep them out of harm's way. Finders were the key to the operation and considered too valuable to waste in fighting.

Mors and Vid retreated to the area where a few barely functioning glowlamps began to give some illumination and settled down to monitor the fight and track the Jedi if he escaped. Vidian positioned himself in a stairwell choked with discarded wrappers and packaging while Mors hid in a room across the old hallway that dead ended in a collapsed ceiling and back wall. Both smelled of rot and things long dead.

They were just settled when a flare of Force energy showed that the ambush had been sprung and the fight engaged. The echoes of blaster fire soon joined it. The strong presence of the Jedi was waning as injuries were taken When a new source drew both men's attention. Coming down toward them from above and behind their position at great speed. Vidian drew his blaster and Mors activated his coms-mike.

"Second enemy approaching on your six!"

One hundred meters down the corridor the Jedi came into view. Both men fired only to see the shaft of a lightsaber appear and bat the shots away. The Jedi put on speed while deflecting two more shots, one returned, shattering Vidian's blaster and burning his hand. The Jedi was almost on them.

Mors tried to use the Force to push her back while Vidian dove for the cover of the stairwell. He hit the top stair of a downward flight and momentum carried him tumbling to its bottom where he pitched up in a jumble of decaying garbage and litter. Behind him he felt the death of Mors Calby. If the Jedi followed him, he was doomed as well. But Vid was wearing the disguise of helpless terror.

For a moment the dark form of the Jedi regarded him in the blackness at the base of the stairwell. Then a jolt of pain and distress from further down the corridor distracted it and the shadow disappeared. Vid sensed urgency as she raced toward the site of the ambush. Sensations of anguish and death followed and then suddenly the Force grew quieter again and the sound of blasters stopped.

Pulling himself upright, Vidian cautiously climbed back up to the passageway. The body of Mors Calby lay flat on its back, his right hand and blaster nearby, his head resting between his left arm and his chest, eyes wide and mouth frozen in a silent scream.

Chapter 10 – NOW WE GO A`HUNTING, A`HUNTING WE WILL GO, OVER HILLS AND VALLEYS LOW, A`HUNTING WE WILL GO…

Vidian Wol and Security Captain Morlen Charl and their driver sat in the hovering speeder with macrobinoculars trained on the window of Nomi Tuvellian's apartment in the building across the speeder-way from them.

Morlen looked at his chrono, "Any time now."

"She's still there," answered Vidian. And then, "She's going to run!"

A red light flashed and the window shattered. A dark figure swung out over the balcony's railing and dropped to a sure-footed crouch on the railing of the next balcony down. For an instant, a pale face turned in their direction, then she was off again, leaping to the next floor down and one balcony to the north. It was the woman from before.

Morlen was on the com, "She's on the move. Two floors down and one door north …"

She ran along the railing and nimbly leaped to the next balcony. The driver eased the speeder forward to keep her in view.

"Now two to the north … and she's going in".

A red lightsaber swung and she was gone from view.

Light came on in the apartment below as Coran Horn swung out over the first balcony and followed the woman with lightsaber in hand.

"She just dropped another level", reported Wol and the Captain passed it on. Red light showed in the next apartment down and Vid sensed someone in terror. Then a blue light appeared flashing in the new apartment.

The room went dark. Moments later lights came on, the steady light of glowlamps.

Morlen Charl's com beeped and Horn's voice came over the speaker, "This is Horn. Tell Vid that I am impressed."

The Captain turned to Vid Wol, but the older man held up a hand.

"They got her. I know."

"What's wrong?" asked Captain Charl.

"The problem being a finder is that you sense the target right up to the end. All of the fear, the moments of hope, the shock as the weapon hits you … I felt all of that … she was very young."

"I hadn't thought about that", the police officer confessed. "Do you want to call this off?"

"No!" answered Vid. "She was arrogant and cruel. Her last thoughts were human enough, but until then she was angry and wanting to kill … and she would have killed anyone in her way. It's sad that she had to die to stop her, but she had to be stopped."

"Last thoughts are different. Some die angry, some overwhelmed with great sadness or regret … some get peaceful and accept what is happening. This one became a child again. She didn't understand and wanted someone to hold her and protect her … someone she cared about."

"The other Sith?

Vid shook his head, "More like her mother I think."

"Oh … That's … pretty tough to take … I guess … But she did have to be stopped."

"Yes, she did", agreed Vidian Wol. "Tell them I'll meet them at the next rendezvous point."

Forty-four minutes later …

The Arconian Jedi, Abarim Bath and his Human Padawan, Alina Imaprov were waiting at the rendezvous point, a Security Police Station in the Resorum-Pilos District.

"She was probably not one of their elite warriors", reported Bath. "None of us knows the signs of their ranking well enough to know for sure and we lost our one informant, but Master Horn reports that her skill level was not as high as he'd experienced in his previous encounters."

He paused as Vidian entered.

"Congratulations, Vidian. The woman has been identified as a Sith."

"I feared so", answered Wol, not looking the least bit celebratory.

Bath took a moment to introduce Vid to the other three people present, Captain Cam Dallestri and the two police Lieutenants that would be leading their backup team, Roge Dannari and Sumina Blasser.

"I'm sorry", said Lieutenant Blasser, a Duro woman in her forties. "What does that mean, regarding the suspect's status? We are not very familiar with such things … except what we see in holovids."

"Apparently Korriban, Sith society is layered with classes, somewhat like the Jedi order. Ours is based on a convergence of natural power and developed skill. The "Jedi" you see in popular images are possessed of exceptional power in a broad range of applications. They develop the skill to use and control this power through the discipline of training and together this creates an all-around "problem solver" capable of using diplomatic and investigatory skills with fighting skill as a backup. "Knighthood" is awarded when a Padawan has demonstrated mastery of the Jedi discipline. There is no rank that is really above that, but we do expect that Knights will give deference to the recommendations Knights that have demonstrated superior mastery and success. We designate them "Masters". The chief among these Masters are asked to serve on the High Council which does give them an assumption of greater authority. And sometimes we have had persons like Master Skywalker or Master Yoda, in the Old Order, whose power and achievements are so exceptional that we entrust them with Leadership. Each Knight is expected to be able to act with independent judgment, so no rank actually overrules their individual authority, though when possible they are expected to report to, receive authorization from and accept assignments from the High Counsel."

"From what Master Skywalker and Ben Solo were able to learn, it appears that Korriban society is more rigidly authoritarian, consisting of an equivalent to Luke Skywalker's former role as Grandmaster, with an equivalent to the High Counsel beneath him, an elite warrior class called "Spears" below that and a larger population of trained fighters and apprentices below that. Obedience is demanded to orders from superiors with disobedience punished by death. There is apparently a great deal of internal attrition due to both punishment and advancement by the challenging and killing of one's immediate superior or rival peers."

"We are not sure how independently low level Sith are allowed to operate. This woman may have been simply cut off from greater authority and acting in cooperation with a peer. Or the second target, this Ardus Alamon, may be a true superior under whose orders she was acting. In short, we should assume that we are confronting someone with skills comparable to those of a full Jedi Knight or a Master."

"That's alarming!" observed Captain Dallestri, a human male with dark, short hair and mustache in his thirties. "But I've heard that the Sith are supposed to be more powerful than the Jedi. Are they not?"

"That was true in the past. For thousands of years the Sith we've known were governed by what we know as "the Law of Two". It was started by a Sith Lord named, Darth Bane and it was a brutal effort to ensure that only the most powerful Sith survived and only so long as they remained the most powerful. The apprentice was expected to eventually kill the "Master" that trained him and then select a new apprentice to eventually replace him. The result was that while there were seldom more than a half dozen of these pairs around, they were always the deadliest the Darkside had to offer. Master Skywalker and others have shown that these Korriban Sith are not superior in power to today's Jedi, but there is still too much about this new threat that we do not know. The informant that we …"

Bath cut off his thought as Master Horn arrived with Olan Karris and Enrik Voranna.

"A successful mission with no losses or injuries on our side", began Corran. "We will need to await some further investigation, but it appears that we may have interrupted a conspiracy of some sort. Forensics droids are going over suspicious materials we found in her dwelling that may be the ingredients for explosives. We also found dozens of inactive mouse-droids and industrial detonators. It appears that "Nomi Tuvellian" was a stolen identity. We're afraid the real Nomi Tuvellian who originally leased the apartment, was probably among this woman's victims."

Enrik added, "The Sith woman bore a close resemblance to the real Nomi, apparently enough to fool the victim's neighbors. It was a good job spotting and tracking her, Vidian."

Corran continued, "This by itself confirms Vidian Wol's claims about the effectiveness of "specialists" like himself, with skills that have been mostly over-looked in the past. I've already sent a message to the Council recommending further investigation with the idea of expanding our training and recruitment if this potential resource proves worthwhile."

"I'm sure that our organization would like to look at this, as well", said Captain Dallestri. If we can arrange a cooperative venture with the Jedi, I would see that as an advantage to both of us. Of course, there are many aspects of our new relationship that still need to be worked out."

"I'll include your suggestion in my next report", offered Corran.

"In the meantime, we still have the other suspected Sith to deal with and I suggest that we should not delay. Did you pick up any impressions during the raid that we need to know about, Vidian?"

After a few seconds of concentration, "The raid was a surprise to her. But when she went off the balcony she had a destination in mind. I didn't sense that she was planning to lead you away from it, but rather … once she reached it she believed she'd be safe, even if you did follow. When you caught her, she was … shocked and afraid. I don't think that you, Master Horn, were part of her expectations."

"I felt her power surge, just before I cut her down," said Corran.

"Should we be arresting this second target," asked Alina? "Might it not be better to keep him under surveillance and see if he leads to others?"

"I doubt we could do that without him detecting us", Oran replied. "We don't know this second Sith's power. I don't think we can afford to take chances."

"Nor do I", said Corran. "Are we still a "go" so far as Security is concerned?"

He directed this to Captain Dallestri.

"I spoke with my Commander just before this meeting. She authorized the action and arranged further back up from Old Lakes District if needed. We are ready to move on your lead."

"And may the Force be with us", added Abarim Bath.

Chapter 11 – A`HUNTING FOR THE PREY, HE RAN UP IN A TREE, BUT WHEN I FOUND I'D CORNERED HIM, THE HUNTED TURNED ON ME…

A blue lightsaber swung toward Ard Nahana's chest. He parried with his shield and struck back with his sword. With his reach advantage he shouldn't have missed, but the Jedi's dark form seemed to melt away from slashing blade. The lightsaber cut the outer covering from Nahana's gauntlet, skipping off its Beskar reinforcement and the cortosis coating on his weapon. Then a kick lifted Ard and threw him back.

Before he could follow this advantage Tulala Sky attacked with her blaster, forcing the Jedi to block. A returned shot creased her shoulder, but the Stormtroopers had joined pouring withering fire at him from three sides.

An urgent voice came over her helmet mike, "Second enemy approaching on your six!"

A Trooper fell, another screamed in shock and pain. The Dresselian Jedi was edging toward a doorway, but Ard dove and rolled beneath the fire to cut off his retreat. The Jedi gestured to toss him out of the way, but Ard resisted, rooting himself in place. Then Tulala attacked with poniard swinging toward the Jedi's head. He blocked her stroke and turned his blade to repost with a thrust, but the defense had cost him too much time.

The first bolt from the clones hit him in the thigh and would have killed him in seconds, but the next two hit his abdomen and chest and two more caught his arm and neck. The blood gushing from a severed artery in his leg slowed as his body hit the wall and rolled to the floor.

Then the mayhem started.

Four Stormtroopers died within the first half second, caught by surprise as they clustered in the eastern doorway. Others fired as Tulala, Ard and Ruus Hammer moved to meet this new threat. Ray Hyarbin dodged decapitation along with the two clones next to him, but lost his right hand and consciousness right after. A burst of focused blocking from Dor Kelles blunted the second Jedi's attack long enough for Tulala to charge with Ard right behind her.

A Stormtrooper's blaster shot was batted back through the visor of his helmet. The Jedi nodded and Tulala Sky was lifted and thrown hard into the wall behind her. Ard ducked beneath an expected lightsaber thrust only to be dropped to his knee by a kick to the side of his head. He blocked the thrust but caught a balled fist to his throat. He remained conscious long enough to see the point of Ruus's poniard emerge from the Jedi's back as he struggled to draw a breath. Darkness and silence engulfed him.

Glow lamps ignited with blinding brilliance after the darkness of the underground. As Vid entered the area of the fight he began to pick out details of the scene.

Surviving Troopers were attending the wounded, Tulala Sky, Ray Hyarbin and four of the clones. Slender Dor Kelles and massive Ruus Hammer stood over the body of a teenaged girl in a bloody sinthsilk blouse, her eyes staring blankly, blood staining her yellow hair. Vidian was shocked to realize that this was the menace that slew Mors Calby and nearly himself in the corridor to the east. Next to her body lay Ard Nahana's, his face discolored by suffocation. Against the further wall, next to where two Troopers were working on Tulala Sky, lay the crumpled corpse of the Dressellian Jedi, body torn by multiple blaster wounds, but still identifiable as that of youth of not more than ten or twelve. The armored bodies of nine Stormtroopers littered the doorways where they had taken inadequate shelter in the fight. Sargent Wrecker was checking these and noting ID numbers.

Vidin was still orienting himself when Lieutenant Antorean arrived with the clones of the "drive team". He walked up to Dor and Ruus, gave the Jedi girl a prod with the toe of his boot, then smiled.

"Good work today! Two kills! Your team's first victory and won over unexpected difficulty. Well done!"

"We hunted children" thought Vid. And then he remembered that the clones were about the same age as the girl and Ard was only about eight years older and Mors only six. "We are children, hunting children …"

He put that thought away before it could grow and fully take form. A little piece of him seemed to go with it … but that was something he'd deal with later. He could not afford to think such thoughts, they might open the door to doubt. He could not let doubt creep in, it would take away the world he believed in … and where would that leave him? He had no answer and that frightened him more than the Jedi and their lightsabers.

And so Vidian Wol found, not the strength, but the weakness to go on…

Ard Nahana was replaced by Jak Greenhills.

Tulala Sky recovered, but fell three months later and was replaced by Oro Karden.

Mors Calby could not be replaced.

Arnas Golando was added to the team's Fighters. He, Jak Greenhills and Ray Hyarbin were lost when the team was ambushed by a Jedi Padawan

Eighteen months after the first mission only 3 remained of the original Team Two, Dor Kelles, Ruus Hammer and Vidian Wol. There was no more "Team Two", just "the Team". Even Jaban Beddar was gone. He received a summons from the Emperor and never returned. Sixty-three Hunters had died and twelve were permanently disabled and unfit for further action. The toll on the Stormtroopers was uncounted, but numbered somewhere not far below one thousand. Eighty-nine Jedi fugitives had been eliminated, most of them certainly students. How many Padawans or Jedi Knights this included could not be determined, but Dor Kelles' reports estimated at least seven and maybe as many as a dozen.

As the last of the original Team Leaders, Kelles had inherited command of Beddar's Hunters.

The gatherings at Gaddhi's Castle were much different now. The other patrons kept their distance from the grim-looking group. Rumor had it that they were part of some Imperial secret police unit. That by itself wouldn't make people shy. Palpatine had ended the war and promised to bring peace to the galaxy. Most people still liked The Emperor and for most of them, life had not changed very much yet. Had these "Hunters" as they called themselves, been a boisterous and fun-loving group they would probably be more popular than ever. But they were a sullen lot, shrinking visibly over the year they'd made this business a gathering point.

Vidian and Fila arrived together, as usual. The two Finders had developed a casual pairing based mostly on the release of tension through passionate exercise. There had been other team-ups in the Hunters, but these were the only pair still left alive.

Half of the team was already there, lanky Dor Kelles, their leader by default sat at the end of their usual table, actually three tables pushed together. Swarthy Danal Bork sat to his right, engaged in some animated discussion with Fraddor Unimassi seated across from him. Both men were fighters and had been in the thick of that morning's confrontation.

A false tip had led them to a Force-user, but the Darkside kind and this one only in their own range of power. Their target turned out to be an assassin for a spice gang operating through the upper levels. The hunt had gone bad when other members of the gang showed up. Noll Brees had gone down with the assassin, two clones and twenty-one of the gang's thugs. Mistakes like this had become more common in the last few months. The Hunters hadn't eliminated a real Jedi disciple in more than six weeks. Those were their last losses before this one.

The young and inexperienced Jedi were getting rarer and the ones they did find were the more dangerous and skillful fighters. Six weeks ago they'd lost three Fighters and a Blocker to a youth who'd probably been wearing a pigtail when he went into hiding. And their quarry got away.

Loren Moller was there. She was permanently on the disabled list. The Empire had outfitted her with new legs, but the spinal injury had left her of no use as a Fighter. She was seated with Luni Huel, the smallest of the Hunters. Luni hadn't seen much action lately. As the last surviving Booster she was being held back for the operations with the higher rated targets. Dor didn't want to lose her ability to a Padawan when there was a rumor of a pair of advanced Jedi, maybe even the infamous Yoda and Kenobi themselves, stirring up mischief in the underground railroad. Across from them sat Aneira Attenor, the third Finder, short and buxom with curly brown hair and Shula Teems, a tall and physically powerful female Fighter. Fila dropped Vidian's arm and scurried over to sit by Aniera, her tightest surviving friend.

Vid said hello to Loren, then joined Tory Hector, Hue Armantian and Daz Bellar at the near end of the table.

"Any news on Toff and Leah?" Vid asked.

"Just the same rumor you've heard", answered Tory. "If they aren't off this planet already they're probably either dead or in prison."

Toff and Leah had gone AWOL right after the "Little-Big Padawan fight". Rumors were that they had been caught and executed like the three that tried deserting near the beginnings of the Hunter's mission assignments. Everyone berated the latest two for deserting the Team, but Vid secretly hoped they wouldn't get caught and he suspected others did as well.

"Part of the problem is the clones. They just aren't up to it like they used to be," said Bellar. "Have you noticed?"

"The clones aren't the problem", argued Tory. "There just aren't enough of them, that's all. We've got what … four, five squads? We used to get that many platoons."

"Hue, Vid, what do you say?" asked Bellar. "I think they're sick or something. It's like they're getting old and tired out."

"They do seem older", observed Vidian.

Hue Armantian was already deep into his goal of getting drunk. In spite of that he had the instincts to lower his voice, "They seem harder, more … inside themselves. But I did notice some are getting gray hairs and the injured don't come back any more. They get replaced, but they don't come back."

"That's right!" Daz Bellar was glad to find support for his favorite gripe. "And I heard rumors from them. Seems there have been some desertions. They don't like to talk about it, but if you come at it right …"

"I've heard that", said Hue, "and more. There's talk of a battle somewhere in the outer rim. A whole bunch of clones went rogue and Vader's clones had to go in and take them out."

The men fell silent. They depended on the clones, even if they didn't much like them. Vid worried because it wasn't just the clones that weren't being replaced. Their own promised reinforcements had never come through either. Probably sensing the somberness at their end of the table Fila looked over to Vid to see if everything was alright. A low lamp behind her lit her pale bond hair like a halo framing her delicate features. Vid smiled to reassure her and her return smile made her heartbreakingly beautiful.

The silence was broken when Ruus Hammer and Dav Holleran, the last of the Hunters came in. They were followed by Jon Antorean, the Lieutenant they worked with most directly. With him came Pointer, the clone's current Master-Sargent.

No one really liked Antorean, but he was good at tactics and knew how to react in a situation. Antorean wanted out and made no bones about it. His goal was an assignment to the biggest capital ship in The Fleet, a third pip on his collar and his second gold bar.

"I want to be on one of those Super Destroyers and if any rebel upstart challenges us, we'll have the shields to protect us and the fire-power to vape them before they can try again. That's how I plan to serve my enlistment."

Such talk didn't go over well with the Hunters who were never volunteers and whose only "future" depended on surviving long enough to see the unit decommissioned. That possibility was on hold for now.

The Hunters had almost served their limited purpose. The Jedi supply on Corruscant had pretty much dried up. Hundreds of tips in a day had dwindled to a few dozen per month. If it hadn't been for the "the Little-Big Padawan Fight" they might all be heading home soon. But that Padawan or Knight had lent credibility to the reports that suggested the team up of at least two Jedi "heavy-weights". No one seriously thought it was one of the really "Big Prizes", Yoda and Kenobi, but Security considered any possible team-up of Knights on Corruscant a sufficient threat to warrant continued hunting. So until they cleared this last Jedi or two, the Hunters were still in action.

"I hate this kriffen job and I hate this kriffen hunt", said Ruus. "I want off this rock so bad, I'd nuke the whole sector if it would get me my discharge."

Vid looked quickly, but Ruus had the sense to keep his voce low enough that neither Antorean nor Pointer could hear his words.

"You get the bomb and I'll pull the trigger", was how he replied.

Ruus leaned in close, "Let's blow out of here and find some more punks to mess up."

Vid had been with Ruus and others when they let off steam by thrashing some of Corruscant's over-abundant supply of street toughs. Vid understood the release that came with beating hoodlums into unconsciousness. But Fighters like Ruus that went toe-to-toe with Jedi wanted to take on whole gangs for their sport and the ferocity of such exercises usually ended up with people getting killed. Since he'd taken up with Fila, Vid had grown weary even of hunting down Jedi. He didn't mind it and figured the Jedi were probably only getting what they deserved, but it didn't make him feel better like it did for some of the others.

Fila didn't like "hunting for toughs". Hunting Jedi was alright, they had a chance and they were a problem that needed eliminating. But toughs were just normal humans gone twisted and unlike Vidian, she lacked the physical power to beat them anyway. Vid got no pleasure from thrashing toughs, he'd personally killed one of the gangsters that morning with his knife, but his size and power gave him all of the advantage he needed. There was no feeling of accomplishment in it. He did get pleasure from being with Fila though and so he turned Ruus down.

"Not tonight, big guy. I'm too tired and anyway … Dor is about to give his toast."

Dor Kelles was ringing his glass, hitting it with the edge of a spoon. When he had everyone looking his way, he stood with an ale in his hand. Everyone around the tables raised whatever they were drinking.

"To the Hunters and the Hunt!"

No one would salute or even mention the team member they'd lost that morning. The dead were dead, it was the living that they toasted, the survivors, the ones who would be at their sides the next time death came near.

One week later …

Dor Kelles called the morning planning session to order.

Before I get to the big news, Ruus and Hue are back. Local authorities have accepted their self-defense plea. Thanks also to Lieutenant Antorean for his efforts in getting the locals to see reason. But let me remind everyone, our job is to hunt Jedi, not local trouble-makers. And obviously, just because they are in a street gang doesn't mean that they don't have families or that those families are just common scum with no influence. Let's be sure to use more discretion in the future. At least dispose of the bodies afterwards."

Murmurs of assent followed.

"The bigger news is we may have a lead on Yoda. One of Isaard's Jedi Hunters was killed yesterday in the Camtown section of the Dranian District. A witness described the killer as a short alien using a lightsaber. It was dark, so we don't have a positive ID, but Yoda is the only known Jedi fugitive that fits this description. Our part of the hunt will cover the neighboring districts of Forre and Low Forre …"

Aneira Attenor signaled a question.

"Are we supposed to try to get him? I've always heard that Yoda is supposed to be off-limits for us."

"The answer is, 'No.' He's considered much too dangerous for us to tackle. Our job is just locate and notify. The Dark Hunters will be in neighboring districts and Lord Vader is on notice to return as soon as he is available."

"If this pans out, it will resolve the "Jedi Team" rumors. This hunt could be all of our tickets out of this."

"We'll be dividing into three teams centered on each of our Finders. We'll follow the practice of Finder's as field leaders while Luni, Dav and I maintain the C&C. We'll do standard area sweeps looking for anything suspicious …"

Shula Teems interrupted this time.

"What's our backup in case we get unlucky?"

"We'll have re-organized our four squads into three. That's how many assault ships we've been allotted. There will be other Troopers in the area, but they won't be in the hunt with us. Each Finder will have a two Fighter backup. If this is Yoda he's the most dangerous Jedi of all time. I don't want anyone who can't at least hide their presence looking for him."

Pointer was present, sitting in for the three lieutenants that usually attended.

"Don't you worry. This Yoda diced his whole advisor team before they could make a move to stop him. Those were our brothers and every Trooper is itching for a chance to even that score."

"Get your gear ready. We'll be moving to the C&C in two hours. It'll be on the Low Forre – Forre border. We'll finish the day with planning and start first recon operations tomorrow at 0700."

Chapter 12 - WAIT FOR ME COMPANION, WAIT FOR ME MY PREY, FOR I AM COME A`HUNTING, HUNTING YOU TODAY…

As the Jedi and security police moved into the vicinity of the suspected Sith's location Sargent Pointer came unbidden back to Vidian's memory …

"Most of us don't care whether we go down to some Resistance fighter's blaster fire or some Jedi's lightsaber. We're all going to die soon, just some sooner than others. All most of us care about is having a chance to fight at the end and not letting our brothers down. I want to make my enemy have to choose to stop me because I gave him no other choice. If one of my brothers can kill him because my enemy had to take the time to kill me doesn't matter, because I'm already dead. But If he kills me, I'll be the guy that made him do it I'll be the one in control."

On another occasion, the last time they really spoke with each other…

"Life is like a march. You've got yours … and we've got ours. You have the luxury to worry about where your march will carry you. I already know where mine carries me. All I have to worry about is … how well I march."

It was only years later that Vidian learned enough about the clone's to understand what Pointer was telling him. During the Rebellion what guilt he felt about hunting down Jedi Fugitives abated as he understood that any evil he had done was as nothing compared to the moral crime of bringing the clones into existence with no life but to fight and die in other people's battles then die anyway, even if they survived the war. It was not until he stood over the nearly unconscious form of Luke Skywalker in the ice fields of Hoth that he understood that they, like himself, like the clones, had not been the creators of their own destinies. He had seen Count Dooku a few times, in the Temple, before he fell to the Darkside. He was shadowed then by worry, but he was far from alone in that. Luke Skywalker had felt more like the clones in his youthful innocence. And he realized then that not all of the Jedi he had killed or helped to kill had born the dark shadow he had seen and taken for granted or the darker taint of leading the clones into war.

It was on Tannadorin 4, standing in the freezing cold, watching a Yuuzhan Vong warrior's fumbling effort to free himself that he added another piece to his puzzle. The creature was totally alien and yet so nearly human. It was lost and helpless and yet struggled on. There was a nobility in its final efforts … but there was no less nobility in their actions when he and his companions killed it. It was then that Vidian understood that there were pieces missing, a part of all these elements that made up his experience that still evaded him … and "click" another tiny bit of it had fallen into place. This was the moment he began to see that he did not understand. Each epiphany since then had brought him closer … and still, he did not understand what they were telling him.

A century before the Resorum-Pilos District was known as "Forre" and it had been host to a fashionable zone for Art and entertainment and trade fairs. Forty years later it still retained much of its attractiveness, though the flight of alien residents had begun and robed it of some part of its famous cultural richness. Fifty years after that, it was a district in decline when the Yuuzhan Vong began their project to reshape the world. Ten years later, it was called "Resorum-Pilos and the surge of post occupation recovery was petering out, the lower levels were becoming slums, controlled more by an ongoing war between a criminal cartel called romantically, The Bright Stars and the declining gang of an outcast Hutt named, "Dodos". The middle levels were turning commercial and only the upper levels maintained their former optimistic appearance.

The commercial, mid-levels still held some islands of respectable business and respectable residences. But most of it was given over to cheaper goods, services and entertainments. So-called "pleasure industries" were taking hold along with the vendors of counterfeit and "pre-owned" goods. It was a place for visitors of the less than legal variety and for low-paid workers and their struggling families. Each level downward below the levels where natural sunlight fell brought more of cheaters of one form or another and fewer innocents for them to prey upon. But it was not only "lower-levelers" that visited there. Many a resident of the higher levels found their way as far at least as the lower, mid-levels seeking thrills and other things that were taboo among their cleaner and better dressed neighbors.

The first potential Sith that Vidian Wol had tracked, the one living under the name, Ardiss Alaman, lived several levels below this mid-range. Public records said he was a "Purchasing Consultant". That could be anything from a fence for smuggled contraband to the person you contacted to find out who could make the bottles for your new line of fizz-water beverages. It wasn't hard to buy or sell anything on Corruscant. The average datapad could pull up lists that would take hours, even days to read. But getting the best product or the best price for your product still took organic intelligence and that meant hundreds of thousands of people who made one level of living or another being the person who knew where to buy and who to sell to. What was suggestive was that Alaman had moved in from off-world ten months earlier. Not long after the Jedi Coup.

The gangs that operated here were mostly local vigilante groups that protected their neighborhoods from each other and the more predatory gangs at the margins of the areas controlled by genuinely criminal organizations. But Corruscant was an armed society. No one knew who had blasters or how many had them at any given location. That didn't stop crimes because most people could be taken unawares and often strangers were reluctant to risk intervening unless they had no choice. But lone criminals died every few minutes on Corruscant, either misjudging a victim's vulnerability or because they attacked when neighbors or family or friends were there to step in.

Captain Dallestri's police took care of contacting the local vigilance committee. They didn't know Alaman as a sales agent, but they knew he had connections with the Bright Stars crime organization. They had a mutual non-interference "understanding" with the Bright Stars, who operated scores of businesses in the ten to twenty levels below them.

Corran placed his Jedi at cut-off points around the suspect's apartment, but at a great enough distance to make detection unlikely. Dallestri's police set up at a series of fast access points well outside of that perimeter. Corran and Vidian were judged the most likely not to be detected in a closer recon. With both hidden as much as their powers allowed, they began a first "walk by" of the apartment. The neighborhood was sub-surface housing, well lit with ground vehicle corridors running not far off and a turbo lift complex nearby that accessed both upper and lower levels. It was still late evening and they hoped that the presence of other residents would help masque their intentions. But when they reached the suspect's door, Vidian stopped and walked right up to it.

"He isn't here But I think I catch his feel several levels below us."

Corran couldn't sense the suspect, but he could sense that there were multiple security devices active in the dwelling. Dallestri's slicers were called in to deactivate Alaman's defenses and set up some passive alert systems of their own in the dwelling's vicinity.

When they were done in the dwelling, one of the techs came out to inform them.

"Some things here you may want to see."

Dallestri, Bath and Imaprov joined them. The techs pointed out a stained area near the entrance.

"That's blood."

Next they led them to a concealed cache in the fresher. A canvas roll lay open revealing its contents, a set of six glass throwing knives.

"Parangs", said Horn. This guy is a Sith. No doubt about it."

The techs restored the apartment and when everyone was out, re-activated the security systems.

"I don't think that will fool him", Corran said. "If someone broke into my home, I think I'd know. So we need to catch him out in the world, before he comes home. Vid says he can home in on him. Are you with us?"

This was directed to Marder Dallestri.

Down a few levels from here is Bright Stars territory. I can't stretch my people out too thin or be too visible. We're in management negotiations with them and our presence will upset too many things. I can give you fast response and evac if you need it."

"I suggest we reconnoiter before we think too much about what resources we'll need", suggested Bath.

"I agree", answered Corran. "Why don't you gather your people and sit this part out, Captain."

"If we are changing the mission I need to clear it with Headquarters."

"That's an excellent idea. You gather your team and I'll gather mine."

"Alina … call Oren and Enrik and ask them to meet us by the turbolifts. You can have your folk meet us there, Captain."

Vidian and the Jedi left Dallestri and his techs by the suspect's dwelling and made for the turbolift bay. When Oren and Enrik arrived, Abarim had a car waiting, they boarded and dropped on low speed until Vid said they were on the right level.

"We're not waiting for the police?" asked Vid.

"Not if we want to catch this Sith", answered Corran. "The Jedi and the government have been going through a rough time lately. And I have a distinct feeling that if we don't move on our own, that Sith will be long gone before we can get near him."

The turbolift let out onto a commercial street that could have been on an entirely different world. Whatever the original intention for this part of the structure was it had been buried in a maze of structures that squeezed together in no particular order. Looking at the ceiling as one stood in the intersection of two of the larger lanes that meandered through the urban in-growth it was clear that this was a very large space, possibly meant as a hauler unloading area. Massive, corral crusted pillars, some 30 meters across, kept the structure above from collapsing into this gap. Many of the small shops and workshops were built in old cargo crates, the kinds seen in large interstellar supply freighters. Others were fabricated on the spot from whatever materials could be salvaged. The level seemed to constitute a small city in the underground of the great city above it.

Following his sense of the Force, Vidian led them northwesterly down broader roads and narrow lanes past a hodge-podge of little eateries and shops and the entrances to low rent housing to the widest lane they had seen so far, wide enough for two small haulers to pass abreast. Thousands of people were packed into this make-shift village, sellers and shoppers, footpads and cons, people from fifty different species and a hundred different worlds. In each block of structures new sounds of music, the babble of a dozen foreign languages and a dozen more variations on Basic, the smell of steaming grain and frying fish, of meat hung to age with fruits and peppers and odiferous melons and edible flowers, the chant of a seller mingled with the chants of an obscure group of monks and the sing-song of children.

Vidian halted them when he felt the Sith's presence become more clear and experience told him they were just outside the range where most Force users would sense their approach.

"This is as close as I think we can get, without being detected. All of you together, the fact that your hunting a person, all of these things effect the midi-choline's in the area. If he's not watching, he probably won't have noticed us yet, but as we get closer your combined effect will be as bad as any one of you going in unshielded."

Corran led them into the nearest business, a sharpening and repair shop for small equipment. A wrinkle-faced Paltorian eyed them suspiciously from behind his counter.

"Here for pick up are you?"

"There is nothing unusual about us. You can ignore us. We will be gone soon"

To Vidian's relief, Corran had remembered not to use the Force to enhance his words.

The Paltorian didn't answer. He just returned to tinkering with some small machine on the workbench before him.

"How are we going to manage this?" asked Oren. "Do you know which shop he's in?"

"Not yet. I think you all should wait here. Try to relax, so you don't make as much of a ripple. He's somewhere down this road, about one or two hundred meters. I'll stroll down that way, masking my presence. But I'll have my com opened. When I know where he is I'll tell you as much as I can. I think we should forget stealth from there on and you should charge him … if you're up to it."

"We'll wait", said Corran. "But don't get too close."

Vidian left the shop and started down the center of the street, steering clear of the hawkers and foot traffic to either side. As he approached a tavern called 'Red Muusmuus', a two story, rough-hewn building of salvaged duracrete pieces mortared together on a plasteel frame, it's long windowless front crowding the approximate boundary of the lane, he noted a trio of thugs lounging across from it in front of a candy kiosk and a pair of bouncers at the tavern's doorway. He opened his com …

"One hundred meters on the right. 'Red Moomoos', guards at door and outside, he's to the right through the door!"

One of the guards across the street had spotted him and started to rise when he saw Vid open his com.

"You!" shouted the guard as his two companions began to react.

Vid smiled and mimicked drunkenness.

The guard was a burly Sakayan, his companions, two brown skinned humanoids with single nasal openings in flattened muzzles of a species Vid didn't recognize. All three guards were on their feet, the first one stepping into the street as his hand found the butt of a blaster at his side. He was radiating confidence and Vid realized that he was already determined to investigate what to him, correctly looked like a scout reporting on locating his target.

The first guard glanced to his right as Vidian sensed his backup entering the street. Calling on Force-enhanced speed, Vid drew his blaster and shot him through the temple. The guards that had been with him began to draw and the guards at the door were reacting, one stepping forward and reaching for a shoulder holster, the other stepped back into the doorway to shout a warning.

The blurred form of Abarim Bath pivoted in front of the two guards by the candy kiosk, slicing both at the waist as he continued his spin and ended facing Red Muusmuus.

A bolt from the blaster of the first tavern guard singed past Vidian's left ear. Vid returned fire, but shot wild hitting only the duracrete façade of the tavern. The guard fired again, but his shot went high as Abarim came down from a leap swinging his lightsaber vertically to cut the guard in two.

Alena was at the doorway, cutting off the near leg of the guard there above the knee. She halted with a skid, using the Force to pull the guard in the door out into the street where he landed tumbling onto the tip of Abarim's lightsaber.

The body of a Bith flew from a window in the building's second story where Corran horn had entered to cut off escape through the building's rear entrance. A screeching of blaster fire broke out suddenly just as the Bith landed with bone-breaking force at the front of the candy seller's stand.

Then Alena was thrown across the street as the bearded man Vid had seen on the tram stepped into the doorway. Oren dropped in front of him from above and his lightsaber stabbed toward the Sith's chest only to be parried as the Sith's red blade snapped upward. Oren was in too close to recover from his momentum and he jerked backwards as the Sith's left elbow snapped into his face. Rooted where he stood, Vidian felt Oren's consciousness shut down as he fell.

Dropping to his knee, the Sith barely managed to get his blade over his shoulder to block a double-handed down stroke from Abarim. The Sith swung with his left and a gash opened across Abarim's midsection.

Another Bith flew from the second story of the tavern to crash into an eatery's storefront opposite to Red Muusmuus while Enrik Voranna, appearing suddenly from further up the lane, slashed the left hand from the Sith as he completed his cut across Abarim's belly. Abarim jumped back, the Sith rolled forward and came to his feet in time to block most of Enrik's follow up stroke. The tip of Enrik's blade cut a short slice into the Sith's left shoulder.

Glass and blaster fire sprayed outward from the tavern's upper story. The Sith stabbed at Enrik's chest, only to have his lightsaber twisted on Enrik's blade and levered out of his grip. But without hesitating the Sith seized Enrik's throat, crooking his fingers into a claw as he pressed to overcome the Bothan's resistance.

Vid drew his dagger and threw. A Shistaven's head flew out of the entrance of the tavern, hitting the Sith in the side. Enrik twisted out of his grip as the Sith fell backwards with Vid's dagger buried to its hilt in his right eye.

Stunned bi-standers, frozen in the beginnings of flight staggered to regain sure footing. Alina Imaprov, favoring an injured right arm, ran to where Abarim Bath was sitting in the street, holding a hand across his wound. Corran Horn backed out of the Red Muusmuus' doorway holding an overweight Bith by the collar with his lightsaber just a little to one side of the Bith's head.

Rubbing his neck, Enrik turned to look at Vidian as he lowered his lightsaber.

Vid straightened from the follow through to his throw. He found his blaster on the ground, where he'd dropped it while dodging. "Enrik!" said Corran Horn. "Take this hostage while I see to Oren." A human female and another Bith stood in the tavern's doorway, Blastech rifles at the ready, but not aimed at any of the Jedi.

Just then, Marden Dallestri appeared from a side street, at the head of a troop of quick-marching Security Police in light combat armor. A pair of Devaronians, also armed with assault rifles, appeared at the other end of the street, separated and then dropped to kneeling firing positions.

"Take it easy!" ordered the Bith prisoner. "Thank goodness the police have arrived!"

Dallestri's police deployed with some watching the Devaronians, some facing the group in the tavern's doorway, six began checking the dead and injured while the rest positioned themselves to tackle the Jedi if called to, or watch for new arrivals.

Marden took a quick look around then walked over to where Corran had revived Oren Karris and was wiping the blood off of his face.

"What the kriff is going on here, Horn? Why didn't you wait for us?"

"Captain!" cried the Bith. "These people attacked my business! They killed a dozen of my employees! And this one is threatening to kill me! Arrest them! Arrest them all!"

In answer to Dallestri's question, Corran stood with Oren Karris, "Don't waste my time with questions when you already know the answers. That body over there is a Sith infiltrator. He killed that spacer on the tram and the Jedi have assisted the police in subduing him. The rest tried to interfere as we were approaching him. Ask the Bith there what he was doing here."

Dallestri took another look around. Then he walked over to where Enrik held the Bith.

"Release him, Jedi, unless you have charges to bring …"

Enrik released the Bith's collar and shut off his lightsaber. Vidian took Oren's arm over his shoulder relieving Horn of the encumberment. Ambulances began to arrive with more police. A news service hovercam hummed by overhead.

"You in the tavern! Stow your weapons and come outside! Now!"

Then he turned to the Bith.

"I am Captain Marden Dallestri, Gallactic Security. You are Inkiro Lob, everything but an innocent tavern-keeper. This human," he gestured toward the dead Sith", was a murderer, an agent of a hostile power and a fugitive wanted by the Corruscant Military. These Jedi have done you a favor. They have removed a threat to you that would have killed you and taken over your organization. Your other men were unfortunate but unavoidable losses resulting from your association with this fugitive. If we are going to establish a peaceful relationship in this district, it is going to need to begin with you not complaining about the Jedi, who are much more important in the eyes of the Government than you are. Contact me tomorrow and we'll discuss any 'legitimate' claims you may have … Do you understand me?"

"Leave soon, Captain." Answered the Bith with his specie's equivalent of a sneer. "When my people hear about this, some of them may get angry. Some may be on their way here now."

"Think about it", said Dallestri and he turned his back on the gangster.

Chapter 13 - WE SHALL GO A`HUNTING, DOWN ALL THE HIDDEN WAY, WE SHALL GO A`HUNTING, HUNTING FOR OUR PREY…

Searching a Corruscant City District was comparable to the proverbial quest for a specific grain of sand on a beach of sand. Low Forre was a mostly residential District with an estimated three million inhabitants. It's true, there are far more grains of sand on an average beach, but the person or people Vidian Wol was looking for wanted to stay hidden, were exceptionally good at it and might be able to detect Vidian's search for them. If they did, they might turn on their hunters, but more likely they would flee, leaving the Hunter's with no prey and no idea where to look for them again.

Early in the Hunter's campaign, Jabban Beddar had understood this tendency to flight and used it to their advantage. He organized "Drive and Net" operations in which he'd flood an area with Hunter Fighters not shielded either by themselves or their Blockers. The Jedi would by instinct flee into a net of Finders, Blockers and Stormtroopers. Fully half of their kills came this way.

But those days were gone. Both Hunters and their prey had become too rare and the Jedi that were left, too wary. The only way to catch Jedi now was to make hunches based on tips, act as if the hunches were true and hope that the Jedi were where they guessed they would be. One hundred Stormtroopers closing in on a dangerous foe radiated too strongly in the Force for the Hunter's two Blockers to masque. If the Jedi weren't in the location the Hunters closed in on, they would skip away at Jedi speed with the Finders the only hope of spotting them and very little hope of anyone catching them.

Now they had a tip that matched the profile for the most wanted Jedi of all, Master Yoda, the centuries-old leader of the cult. Every Jedi Hunter available would be involved, even squads of the Imperial Guards and Darth Vader himself.

Beddar's Hunters would be located in an empty restaurant on the border of the Forre and Low Forre Districts. They arrived in the evening of the day they heard the news and began laying plans and readying their equipment. Later that night Dor Kelles and the three Finders, Aneira Attenor, Fila Tarner and Vidian Wol took an assault ship up with Lieutenant's, Jon Antorean, Teller Vissik and Ford Solerian to get an overview of the territory they would be covering.

"We'll start out with basic dragnet surveys", began Kelles. "Then we'll repeat them at progressively lower levels. Vid, you have the best ability with Blocking, besides Dav and me. So we'll team with Aneira and Fila and it'll be up to you to cover your backup."

"Who do I get?"

"Ruus and Tory."

"It'll be hard to manage both against someone like Yoda. I've met him and I'll know his feel, but I'd rather go with one backer at a time … maybe switch them out to give us a different feel."

Antorian supported Vid's call, "Vid's a good fighter as well. I think we should go with him on this."

"We'll call it settled then. Step-off begins at 0800. When we get back we'll need to plot our routes."

The first day of the hunt began with surveys of the upper levels of this landscape of lofty towers. These islands of the wealthy and powerful were considered less likely areas for Jedi to hide. Even Jedi could become trapped in such places. But they needed to be eliminated if only because the Jedi were wily and quite likely to hide where least expected.

With Ruus Hammer as is partner and disguised as local constables, Vid rode one turbo lift system after another to within a few levels of the top. Fila and Aniera did the same with both Fighters and Blockers, constantly scanning for concentrations of the Force or voids that might show that someone was hiding themselves. All of them got "hits". But all proved to be within the more common range of power as they investigated more closely.

At the end of a sixteen hour day they were worn out, but the upper levels had all been checked. Lieutenant Solerian amused them with a story of a hunter from the Imperial Guards who had lost a hand trying to kill one of Isaard's hunters in an embarrassing overlap of search parameters. Such a mistake might have alerted the quarry, though by luck it happened far from the center of the search. Discouraged, Vader decided to delay his arrival and the next day the hunt resumed, still with vigor, but with less of a sense of anxious urgency.

On the evening of the second day, the survey's were cut short. Available personnel were ordered to report for a special briefing. When it appeared that most of the team had arrived, Dor Kelles stood with two of the three lieutenants on what had been a stage for performing bands in what had been the main dining room when the space for the Hunter's HQ was a restaurant. Around the large room sat most of the Stormtroopers, Hunters and Navy Techs assigned to the Hunters Team, their equipment and work stations temporarily moved to the sides to clear this space.

"We have several things to report this evening."

"Lieutenant Solerian is no longer with us. He's been transferred back to Naval Intelligence."

"Due to our shortage of Blockers, we've decided to re-organize into three survey units with two back-up squads ready for quick response. We think this will mean better support when a target is located and greater efficiency in shifting resources. I'll meet with the Finders after this meeting to discuss any details. Troopers assigned to squads under Lieutenant Solerian, check with your non-coms. Lieutenants Antorean and Vissik will be meeting with them after this meeting."

"Will Midshipmen, Roben, Jussik and Co'Rannen please stand."

Three techs, new to the team stood, two women and one man, all human and young stood up.

"Welcome to the Team. Third Officer Cernian will be your Chief. See him for any needs you have."

"The really big news is that earlier today Isaard's hunters found and eliminated an Ugnaut with significant Force potential. It has not been confirmed that he was associated with the Jedi, but that investigation is still underway. In lieu of this, by order of Lord Vader, the joint-force hunt has been suspended. Lord Vader is confident that the fugitive known as, "Yoda" was not on Corruscant and the resources have been applied to another pressing matter."

"Senator Da'as te-Anok has been found to have been conspiring with enemies of the Empire. Agents sent to apprehend him were found murdered and the killer used a lightsaber. Association with Jedi has been added to his charges and his capture has become a priority."

"We have been charged with looking for evidence of a rumored Jedi smuggling operation possibly located in the Low Forre District. So, our efforts to date have not been wasted. We will continue our sweeps with this new objective in mind. If Jedi fugitives are trying to assist this traitor's escape, they may reveal themselves through that activity."

"The Empire is posting Vader's Force-users at major cargo and passenger ports and stepping up "Stop and Search" operations by the Customs Authority. We will be shifting the focus of our hunt away from residential hide-outs to public areas where contacts can be hidden among large crowds, particularly those that attract independent haulers. Security Intelligence has supplied us with charts of areas to be targeted. Those not otherwise involved should spend the remainder of tonight studying those charts. Operations begin at 0700 hours."

The following morning Vid awoke to the Trooper's "Morning Call to Duty". He looked first to Fila Artenis's cot, but she was already up and heading toward the door with Aneira and Shula Teems with their civvies bundles under their arms. Vidian swung his feet onto the floor bringing him face to face with Luni Huel. The green Twilek was the last non-human on the Team and the only one among them that woke looking as fresh and pretty as when she went to bed. She was also the only one among the females that slept without the loose shift or brief shorts and top most of them preferred. Vid had seen her body many times and had even had the opportunity to go beyond just looking during several of them, nonetheless, he wasn't immune to the pleasure again nor to the blush he felt growing on his face as she noticed him looking at her.

Usually Luni would play with such a situation, stretching her arms and arching her back while making distracted sighing sounds. She had a sense of humor regarding male's reactions to her and seldom missed a chance to tease. But this morning she just looked down at the floor as she grabbed a stretchy shirt and pulled it on over her head. She picked up her clothing bundle set out the night before and headed out following the other women to the sanistation.

A hard hand slapped Vid's shoulder.

"Get your eyes off the prize, Wol. We've got a long day ahead."

Tory Hector walked past with his bundle and Vid reached down to the floor to grab his own. They were teamed together that morning. Half of the Team was already out of the room and the valet droid was starting to collapse the emptied cots to make room for "equipping time".

Since this stage of the operation was "undercover", "equipping" for them meant just packing or strapping on their communicators and side-arms. Only the Fighters on fast response standby would do full equipping this morning. The stacks of shields, armor and heavier weapons were racked on rolling hangers arrayed along the walls to either side of the doorway ready for grabbing in a hurry. Only side-arms like pistol-style blasters and knives were kept with them at all times. The cots would be leaned against the far walls out of the way leaving only the Team members small personal items. The chests that held them and under-garments would remain arranged across the floor where the chests doubled as stools for the equipping ritual. All military units practiced something like this. For the Hunters, going toe-to-toe, one-on-one against Jedi, the importance of their own control over their own equipment could not be overemphasized.

The Hunter's bunk space was a windowless conference room down a short hallway off of the main dining area, now in use as the Team's command and control center. This was where the technicians unit had set up their monitoring and broadcasting equipment and a small lab for quick testing and analysis. Further down the hall, two smaller meeting rooms had been converted to temporary sanistations, one for male and one for female personnel. Beyond that were a few utility closets, the original, built-in sanistations and an auxiliary cable-lift going to the kitchens, lower dining rooms and loading and storage areas below. The restaurant occupied a wedge that stretched four levels down the southeast side of a mostly commercial office tower near the border of the Forre and Low Forre Districts. The Team's one hundred and twenty-four Stormtroopers were billeted with the mechanics and medical units in the lower dining rooms under the kitchens the Team's vehicles, including three assault craft, were kept in what had been the loading bay and customer air-vehicle garage on the lowest level in the property. This large and once prosperous restaurant had been vacant for a year since its owners were arrested for suspected association with opponents to the Empire.

After breakfast and a brief meeting for last updates, the Team broke for equipping. The survey teams took only minutes, but it was long enough for Vidian to notice that Luni, who had skipped the update, was now also late for equipping. That was her own affair, but added to her unusually withdrawn behavior Vid's curiosity was peaked.

"Fila, do you know where Luni is?"

Fila holstered a blaster below the small of her back and grabbed the jacket that would cover it.

"She said her civvies weren't right. I suppose she went down to the carts."

Hover carts with containers of costumes were kept with the vehicles on the garage level. It crossed Vid's mind to check on her, but Luni was sensitive and would know. He decided to ask her about it later, after the day's hunt.

"Ten Heroes Square" was the center for the morning's survey. The "square" was a large triangular platform stretching between three towers. It was named to honor a rescue worker team that had saved thousands during the Separatist siege near the end of the Clone War at the cost of their own lives, but the square long predated their sacrifice. It had been home to a semi-permanent merchant's market for seventy years. Locals knew it as "The Smuggler's Fair", one of many such operations around the planet. It consisted of rows of booths and carts selling a wide range of imports, many off of small, independent freighters, mostly remaindered items from other planets and quite a few, genuine smuggler's goods, (though these were not on open display). Customs patrolled the market regularly and was in the process of an arrest when Vid and Tory arrived at the southern corner.

The arrest didn't bother the Hunters any more than it would have bothered fugitive Jedi. It lent a "business as usual" feel to the morning. Aneira and Dav Hollerman, with Shula as their Fighter were scheduled to head to the northeast corner, while Fila, Kelles and Fraddor Unamasi would drop three levels and follow a pattern generally below and between Aneira and Vid's patrols. After clearing the square they would follow a strip of commercial districts known as "the Ridgeline" running from Ten Heroes Square to the Consortium Exhibition Center and the Agricola Herbarium. Between them lay seven kilometers of the kind of eclectic retail zone that attracted off-world sellers and adventurous shoppers and could serve as a cover for all sorts of illicit trading and clandestine meetings.

The morning route brought them a few weak hits, but none that suggested the kind of power that Jedi possessed.

In the late morning they shifted to a zone called "the Dark Forest". This was a thirty level maze of crisscrossing roads and pedways, much of it no longer used for traffic, beginning in the low sunlight region and descending almost to the dark zone. The "Forest" was suspended between five major buildings and an active Planetary Defense Tower with a turbolaser battery at its peak.

Fila and Aneira's units began near the sunlight level and took a roughly spiraling course downward while Vid and Tory used a speeder for a slow spiral upwards. A possible contact was made at the thirteenth level downward, but when the units drew near it dispersed into a typical "Ghost contact". These were usually the result of fighting between two or more low power Force users. Their proximity and heightened draw on the Force created the illusion of something more powerful. In this case, two gangs had been settling a boundary dispute and both employed a number of professional level enforcers.

On a planet as densely populated as Corruscant, an average day brought the Finders within range of anywhere from dozens to scores of sentient deaths, some very traumatic with deceptively strong Force signatures. These were generally brief flashes and the finders had learned to ignore most of these distractions, but occasionally everyone was fooled by one and Fila was particularly poor at ignoring the cases of extreme pain, fear or anguish. Though they had to bi-pass these tragedies to avoid their interference with their primary mission, if a police response was not achieved, the Fighters would sometimes return to put an end to the sources of such disturbances after the day's hunt was over. It was a way of releasing tensions. A beneficial bi-product of the Hunter's surveys was often a temporary drop in the instances of Sadistic killings in zones they had patrolled and occasionally victims were rescued in the process. Another tension release came in raids on street gangs that had confronted or harassed them during the day. A few Fighters had come to harm this way. But most of the time they pursued this recreation in groups and most often they were very one-sided battles.

When the survey team returned to the base that evening they were called immediately into a special briefing. Jon Antorean addressed the whole Team with a list of announcements.

A new possible identity had been uncovered for the alien Jedi of earlier reports. Instead of the Ugnaut previously disposed of, researchers had discovered references to an elderly Gossam, not yet accounted for.

"His name was Kamit Ars-Moselet, a Jedi Master long retired from active service. There was no record of him going on any missions for at least twenty years and he will already have passed the normal life expectancy of his species. As you know, saboteurs destroyed the Temple personnel records after the purge so we had no direct knowledge of whether he was still alive or not."

"Now we know that he was alive at least ten months before the purge because a record was found of him signing in at the Republic Government Archives to do research in the Original Documents Library."

Antorean pulled up a holo of a Gossam, a short humanoid with an elongated cranium that tapered to a point at the back of its head. Viewed from the front, it was possible to see that a description of this Jedi could have been mistaken for a sighting of the notorious Yoda.

"This old-timer doesn't rate the effort Yoda would have, but be aware that he could be out there."

The other piece of news was more disturbing. Luni Huel was missing and suspected of desertion.

"Command is very angry about this and steps will be taken to shore up discipline. All leave from this base is suspended until further notice and when she is caught, you may expect that a severe example will be made of her."

Fila was standing close behind Vidian and he felt her take his hand and squeeze it. She meant it as reassurance; it was no secret that he had intimate times with Luni as well as Fila. He expected to be questioned about her. But all he could feel toward the Twilek woman at this point was resentment that she had abandoned all of them in the midst of an operation. He had risked his life for the Team on many occasions, they all had. Her desertion was a rebuke of the trust they needed maintain. This was worse than letting the others down by dying or being disabled. They might all die, but she would still be alive and free. Paradoxically, he knew that in a few weeks he would wish for her successful escape and survival. But at that moment all he could feel was betrayed.

Chapter 14 - WHERE ARE YOU MY COMPANION? WHERE ARE YOU NOW MY PREY? I WILL NO MORE GO HUNTING, NOW YOU ARE GONE AWAY…

With the Sith destroyed Vidian's life returned almost to normal. He thought that the success he had given them would lead to an eagerness to take up his plan for a school for people like himself, lower power Force users with one or more talents that could make them useful. But Corran Horn had seemed cool to the idea. He mentioned that they did some training for lower powered Force-users already, but nothing like the focused training Vidian could offer.

Enrik was only slightly more encouraging. He repeatedly urged Vidian to consider coming to Yavin 4 to rest and recuperate.

"You must understand that your experience with the Force has been a traumatic one and Beddar's Hunters was a dark and destructive introduction to its potentials. You need to work on moving beyond those experiences and I believe that we could help you with that."

But whenever Vidian tried to sell his idea, even Enrik seemed to turn a deaf ear to it. He understood their hesitance. All Enrik and Corran had seen was his tracking ability. When it came to fighting the Sith they had still relied on power and training versus power and training. They hadn't seen how effective the teamwork of a Hunter unit combined with conventional backup could be. A single Sith Warrior had nearly matched four of them and yet still they were stuck thinking of Sith-Hunters as having to be full powered Jedi. Vidian was convinced that the well-trained, full-strength squads they had at the beginning of Beddar's Hunters could have done the same job with more certainty because their individual weakness had forced them to fight as a team.

He wanted them to understand this because, inexplicably, the void inside him still remained in spite of all he'd done to make amends and pay the debt he owed to those he'd wronged. It nagged at him almost constantly, relieved most when he was thinking about or pushing for his plan.

For a while the Corruscant government had seemed interested in his ideas. Based on Captain Dallestri's report, they sent people to interview him, to record his memories of the training they went through, of the organization and the tactics they employed. Then after two months, they thanked him and announced that they were done. Vidian had hoped that the government's interest might give him the support he needed to get through the Jedi's indifference. He tried to argue that he had much more information to give, but was told that Imperial records had been uncovered that gave them all of the additional information that they could use.

When he tried to enlist Captain Dallestri's help, he was told that the Captain was on special assignment and unavailable for the foreseeable future. When he took his story to the news media he was told that they had no interest about a side-story from a time few remembered and most of those would prefer to forget.

He did find a Doctoral Candidate in the Corruscant Global University System, an Elomin named Nariss Aland, that was enthusiastic to learn about this little known element of the Imperial period. She hoped to include this in her thesis on the Palpatine Regime.

"I'm working on the proposition that, if we take the Imperial Government as a model and then postulate the opposite of its structures and policies, we can generate a model for a more perfect theory of government! Take Palpatine's efforts at centralization, as an example, to centralize the power in government he eliminated the Senate that gave each planet or Sector legislative representation in order to eliminate its tendency toward stalemates and stagnation on important projects and policies. He then expanded on the existing bureaucracy, further departmentalizing it and making its Directors answerable to him. But this created too much room for hiding corruption, so he instituted the military Moffs and civil Governors to help oversee the bureaucracy's operations, a second pyramidal structure of secondary authority overlapping the first."

"Go on", Vidian encouraged.

"Well … The reverse of that would be a decentralized system in which the local planetary or Sector governments, become the primary managers of local affairs. In the Old Republic they sent representatives to a democratic-republic with a Chancellor selected from and answerable to the majority coalitions within the Senate. This system worked for millennia but bogged down whenever the Senate would try to intervene in local affairs and generate opposition based on the threat this posed to local autonomy. Had the Senate limited itself to defense of the Republic, guarantee of few limited but important civil rights and arbitration of disputes between the autonomous systems, we would probably still enjoy the Old Republic today."

"Instead, they did try to intervene, always with what seemed like good intentions, leading to the Separatist rebellion and creating the conditions in which the more decisive leadership of the Emperor seemed a more efficient approach to doing what the Senate was never intended to do … the management of local affairs."

"Now suppose that instead of that they had …"

The young Bothan spent more time explaining her ideas on a de-centralized government with a central core limited in its authorities than in finding out the history of Beddar's Hunters. But Vidian appreciated that she at least did explore that subject in greater depth than anyone else had wanted to. Eventually Nariss reached a point where she needed to move her studies to Ossis where the Library restoration had created a treasure trove of Imperial records previously confined to Corruscant and largely not easily accessible. From her he did learn that there were no records of any of the other survivors of the Hunters still remaining, but himself. All of the clones and Naval officers had long since passed away.

Lieutenant Ford Solerian had died during the Battle of Endor, one of the subsequently identifiable losses in the defense of the ground-based shield projector.

Lieutenant Teller Vissik had died during the Hunter's final mission.

Lieutenant Jon Antorean had won a promotion and the assignment he always dreamed of, a posting to the Intelligence Division on the biggest and best defended warship in the fleet. He was among the estimated one million losses in the destruction of the First Death Star in the Battle of Yavin 4 soon after taking part in the destruction of his home-world, the lost planet, Alderaan.

Of the Hunters only four, besides Vidian and Fila Tarver survived to the end of the First Galactic Civil War; Loren Moller, Alma Emedda, Farkis Gor and Marc Gusman. All of these had since passed away from natural causes.

The only unaccounted for member was Luni Huel. She disappeared from the records on the day she deserted and her story from that point on was unknown.

Bessany gave birth and soon after, Baby Fila did attract the attention of a Jedi. They offered to take the infant to Yavin 4, but accepted Bessany's refusal. After Nariss Aland left, Vidian travelled to Corellia to visit and see his Great Granddaughter and for a while he was content and all was well.

But the old empty feeling still ate at him and once he was away from it, he felt more strongly than ever that its answer lay on Corruscant. After three months, long before his welcome could wear thin, he bid Bessany and her husband goodbye and booked passage to return. He had decided to try once more to convince the Jedi to pay attention to his offer. A year before he had found two hidden Sith without even trying to. He felt confident that if he actually went about searching for more, he could find them. Then, he believed, the Jedi would have to listen to him.

He made a plan to survey the entire planet, latitude by latitude. He didn't expect that he would find a Sith that way, but as he travelled he would meditate and trust in the Force to guide him. Age and experience had honed his abilities and he was much more strongly aware of and connected to the force than he had been in his twenties. He was not wealthy. But investments he'd made long before gave him sufficient income to afford this kind of quest. And until he achieved his goal or found some other course to follow, the hunger inside him would continue to prod him anywhere he tried to live.

Chapter 15 - A`HUNTING I AM CAREFUL, CAREFUL AS CAN BE, FOR HE THAT I AM HUNTING, MAY WELL BE HUNTING ME…

On the third day of the hunt the survey teams began in a new sector called, "The Kettle". It was a lamplight zone built up beneath the broad platforms and giant cranes of an industrial space port that serviced both the District Administrative towers on its northwest side and the giant ship fitting hangers, cradles and warehouses on eastern and southern sides. Beneath the kilometer long and half kilometer high elevated landing pad, between its titanic supports and the supports of the crisscrossing ramps and roads around it and between the mountainous foundations of the adjacent structures, a sub-city of more mundane proportions had spread like an invasive fungus. Much of it still opened onto air that was circulated by the natural winds of the planet, but so many barriers blocked it from the light that it was as dark in its depths as most subsurface areas of the city they shared. Some of the areas they would pass through were reasonably safe and under civil authority. Others were dominated by local syndicates that operated under the protection of one of the most powerful crime organizations on Corruscant and beyond it, the Black Sun.

The disguises for this survey were much rougher looking. Vidian and Ruus were dressed in dark boots and trousers modified from the battle fatigues of the Hapan Consortium. Their "back story" would be that they were deserters become free-lance mercenaries. In keeping with this, Ruus wore twin holstered blasters hung from crossing belts and strapped down around his thighs. A knee length sleeveless Bantha leather coat covered them and the foot-long vibro-knife he wore at his back, but not the meter long short staff he carried with heavy metal bosses at either end.

Vidian was more modestly outfitted with a black synthsilk shirt covered by a vest of synthetic leather layered with pierce-resistant ironweave. His single blaster hung at his waist in cross-draw position, his dagger on his right hip. Slung on his free left shoulder was Ruus' target shield with Beskar rim and plating. Neither man would stand out in this attire in areas where Mandoloreans and others in full or partial battle armor were not an uncommon sight. Ruus' physical appearance would attract more notice than his hardware. As an exhibition fighter before being enlisted he had beat Trandosians and even once a Wookie in unarmed brawls. His fight name had been, "The Rusty Hammer" a play on his red hair, his true name and the power of is Force enhanced blows.

Comparably outfitted, Aneira and Dav Hollerman were in spacer garb and Danal Bork was outfitted with parts of clone night-ops armor covered with a non-reflective gray poncho. Fila was dressed as a pleasure girl with Dor Kelles her handler and Hue Amantian her guard. The plan called for parallel arching sweeps with Aneira's team three levels above Fila's and Vidian's.

By late morning Vid and Ruus were making their way through a work market where low-rate employment agents tried to match low-skill workers with contractors and other temporary labor seekers, usually for commission plus whatever bribes they could squeeze out of the desperate. Spread out along the margins on either side of a broad hovercraft lane between buildings, agents pitched their offers from sheds and booths while thousands of the poor and almost poor shuffled from one station to another. At 0600, a peak time for the market, the lane had been packed. But as Vid and Ruus walked it, the best jobs and best job seekers had already been matched up. Many of those that remained sat or stood hoping for something worthwhile as new calls came to the agents. Many just killed time waiting for the next peak at 1600 hours when calls for evening workers and a fresh crowd of seekers would start to flood in.

With the Clone Wars ended, large numbers of both males and females were out of work, discharged naval draftees, former war industry workers and plenty of off-worlders and cast-out refugees trying to raise the stake to get back to wherever they came from or on to someplace new. The neighborhoods Fila's team was sweeping were mostly low rent shanty towns and in-filled apartment buildings where the same displaced workers spent their rest periods between whatever jobs they could find.

Among the seekers were predators that targeted them, hooligan gangs, prostitutes, pinch-purses, hucksters, gamblers, counterfeit hawkers, strong arm robbers and vendors of diluted spice. But there were also some that came on missions to help. A make-shift medical clinic performed exams and gave out minor cures. Religious groups tried to provide the addicts an alternative or make contacts with job seekers with children. A refugee organization tried to connect people to their homeworld relatives or other groups of refugees, a veterans group offered aid to ex-military in need of a footing in a post war galaxy.

There was another type of predator, hidden among the agents. Ex-naval personnel were usually too specialized. But out of work mercenaries could be just what they wanted. There were legitimate booths that catered to this, recruiting soldiers for dozens of worlds looking to rebuild depleted defenses or sometimes to take advantage of their neighbor's depletion of defenses. And there were agents that didn't set up booths, but were scouting for muscle, mostly for the smaller organizations responding to an unprecedented growth in the reach of Black Sun. Some of the latter solicited Ruus and Vid, leaving contact information when the Hunters turned them down. One of the predatory versions of this kind of agent spotted Ruus and Vidian when they paused because Vid had sensed an unusually dark concentration in the Force around the shed they used as a booth.

"You lookin for work?" asked the shed's hawker. He was a short, middle aged human with one mechanical eye and the dense muscle of a heavy-worlder.

It was an innocent question, but Vidian sensed an imminent threat as the hawker sauntered toward them. Vid found that his hand had strayed to the grips of his blaster.

"We got good-paying work for boyos what don't mind a little dirt on their hands."

Ruus apparently sensed the threat as well. Without Vid signaling him, he shifted to a ready stance and began looking around as if he expected a bag-team to sneak up behind them using the hawker as distraction. It was a good precaution, but Vid sensed that the real danger lay inside the shed.

"We'll pass on that", Vid answered.

The short man's eyes slitted slightly and he appeared to be appraising them.

"I got a short job. No danger. One hour. A thousand creds each. But it's a rush. Gotta fill it in the next hour. Why don't you let me show you the holo on it? Any reason you can't just see what it is?"

He gestured, inviting them to follow him into the shed.

Ruus was looking too casual all of a sudden. He'd gone from hyper alert to relaxed wthout reason, always a dangerous sign. Vid realized that the short man was using the Force … overriding Ruus' suspicions. Vid glanced aside at the nearest cluster of destitute seekers and decided to let himself feel angry. He sensed that this was a "snatch" operation, that if they followed the lure into the tent they'd be stunned or gassed and wake up slaves, maybe shanghaied on a pirate ship or in a cage in the Survival Fight circuit. Visian could sense the trap, but who knew how many of these other poor people had fallen for the ruse or would fall for it if he and Ruus just walked away …

"What do you say?" asked the hawker.

Vidian nudged Ruus, "I say, beetle-paste."

There was a slightly dull "crack!" as Ruus' short staff made a deep dent in the hawker's skull. He fell like a sack of bricks, but Ruus grabbed one arm and Vidian the other and with a quick look and a nod they threw his body through the door of the shed.

The harry arm of a Wookie caught the hawker's body and the shoulders and head it was attached to leaned across the doorway. The Wookie just had time to snarl before Ruus' vibro-blade slice through his neck. A second Wookie reached around the door frame from the other side, grabbed Ruus by the jacket and yanked him into the darkness in the shed where the big human crashed against the back wall.

Vidian ducked as the Wookie swung his arm and massive fist at his head. The Wook's arm hit the door frame instead, cracking its timber. He howled, both at that pain and the pain in his gut as Vid shot him at point blank range. Even with a hole in his belly that Vid could have put his whole fist into, the Wookie snapped a fist at Vid that would have crushed his chest if he hadn't turned out of its way with practiced speed. Before the Wookie could recover, Ruus hit him full force in the side of the head. The Wook took the blow and started to turn toward Ruus raising his right arm for a counter-blow when Vidian's second shot burned a hole through the hairy face and into the skull behind it. The Wookie made a satisfying "grunt" as it fell to the floor and quiet returned.

Ruus switched on his hand-lamp and swept it around the interior of the booth while Vidian looked outside. The area around the booth had cleared. The people that were visible were determinedly not staring at the place where blasters had just fired and Wookies had been howling. The booths to either side were empty.

Vidian's communicator chirruped.

"Vid! It's Fila. Do you need help?"

Another call was waiting from Aneira. They'd both felt the Force disturbance.

"We just had a run in with some thugs. It's handled, but we'll need a disposal unit …"

Ruus called from inside the booth where he'd lit a glo-lamp, "Tell them to send medical transport for five."

Inside the booth, behind a screen at the far right-hand wall stood a rack and on it the bound and sedated bodies of five previous victims.

Dor Kelles' voice came over the com. The locals are on their way. We'll call the rest of this survey and head to the next rendezvous at 1300."

Vid knew that Dor was right. It was useless to hunt here after the disturbance he and Ruus had made. He was just glad that this time they'd have something to show for it. He spotted a meat-cake vendor across the lane …

"Ruus? Do you want something to eat while we wait?"

"Yo!" replied Ruus. "our "hosts" left us some Camassi Ale to go with it!"

Being Imperial Intelligence agents made the police questions disappear and two hours later Vid and Ruus were deployed with the other survey teams in a different part of Low Forre. This was called "Morning Town" and it was a more prosperous neighborhood, free of the really big towers and with large stretches of sunlit plazas. The strategy for this search would involve a complex pattern of circular movements with Vid and Ruus starting on the north, Aneara's group on the east and Fila's group making wider circles three to four levels down.

Most of the people in this section were middle range professional and trades-workers . There were also many students from the Corruscant Academy of Ethnic Studies, the campus of which ran along the eastern side of this neighborhood. Many of the buildings held "compartments" rather than apartment's or suites. Some had communal kitchens and others only communal sanistations. They were temporary cheap housing for adventurous young people between lectures and lab sessions in the research facilities. A few years earlier the area had boasted one of the largest non-human populations on Corruscant. But that had started changing just in the last year with new restrictions on travel permits, property purchases and school admissions made more difficult for non-humans.

An event related to this was taking place as the team arrived in its start-off positions. The Senate was debating the Naval Uniformity Act, one of many cost saving initiatives unrolling in the decommissioning phase of the Empire's post war military planning. This phase was an efficiency measure seeking to eliminate the extra costs and confusions created by integrating alien species into the new, standing Navy. The proposal was simply to limit most recruitment and Naval outfitting to the dominant species type, Humans. They already made up a majority of naval personnel and all of the clone army. Future segregation of the standing military, it was projected, would save more than three trillion credits per annual budget while non-humans would still have chances to serve in the traditional planetary defense forces. Of course, those elements still clinging to suspicions about the Emperor were susceptible to the propaganda of the "anti-peace faction" and unwilling to consider the reasonableness of this modification.

Aneara reported pedestrian and vehicle congestion due to a public protest rally taking place just south of her. An estimated few dozen to one hundred dissidents were creating a disturbance at the entrance to the Academy campus and between them and the news crews covering the protest, normal traffic was stalled throughout the eastern quarter of the District. This pre-scheduled event was the kind of disruption that had brought out pro-Jedi radicals almost two years before and resulted in the location and elimination of nearly a dozen Jedi fugitives seeking to exploit the situation. Dor Kelles had scheduled this survey for this day in the hope that they would again be able to capitalize on the Jedi's foolishness.

Hooligans joined the protestors and began attacking public safety units in the area. They were quickly dispersed and the ringleaders arrested, but Aneara's unit had fallen behind schedule for the planned sweeps.

It was soon after this, at 1433 hours, that Kelles reported that Fila had detected a good prospect. The target appeared to be above her and about a half click to the southwest, moving west. That put Vid and Ruus on the best tack for an interception, they were southwest of target and Aneara's unit was northeast.

Tracking systems at the base in Forre gave Vid street maps with moving locations for the target, themselves and the other units. While Vidian navigated, Ruus ran block, warning or when needed, pushing people out of the way. They dropped at a convenient ramp to the same level Fila thought the target was on. Fila and Hue closed some distance under the cover of Dor Kelles' blocking. Vid picked up the trace and confirmed its suspicious nature. It was as though a Jedi was fast-walking through the city using a low manipulation level, but making no apparent effort to hide his potential. Aneara's unit broke out of the disruption zone of the demonstration and began to catch up from the rear.

Ideally they hoped to bracket the target between their three units but keep far enough back and well enough shielded not to be noticed until the rest of the team could set an ambush. The danger was that a Jedi might turn and attack one of the units, wiping them out before help could arrive.

Second Lieutenant Dorran called from the C&C Base. Antorean was on the way to the west with seventy Troopers. Vissik was headed to the east with thirty in case of a double-back. An aerial police-droid patrol was approaching the target's route and would record images as they passed over. If they could triangulate an approximate position they might be able to make a visual ID.

Fila's team slowed and Dor started calling out position estimates using the maps the Base was broadcasting. To compensate and keep the target bracketed, Aneara's unit swung to the north and sped up until they pulled level with the target's location.

The target continued to appear oblivious. He took a ramp back up to the sunlight level but continue in the same general direction.

A sense of foreboding hit Vidian, not from the Force, but from a memory of his father back on Naboo…

Vidian, the child watched uncomfortably as his father tied the pelt of a Ganna to a long length of heavy fishing line.

"There we go!" said the Game Keeper. "We know where the Kitterax likes to cross the river and we know his favorite treat is Ganna. We've hidden our snare in the shrub downstream and taken care to mask our scent with stink-rush. We set the drag upstream and pull it across the Kitterax's path, into the shrub and right to the snare we've set."

"Wiley old Kitterax comes over the river looking for food and what does he smell? A fresh trail of Ganna scent. Kitterax follows Ganna, steps right in our snare and we have a nice, unspoiled Kitterax pelt."

"A drag-bait!" thought Vidian. "This target's acting like a drag-bait!"

Vid pulled to a stop and looked around for shelter. Ruus stopped about forty meters ahead, saw Vid's retreat and snapped into defensive mode. Bi-standers veered away, a few turned around and ran. Fortunately no one drew a blaster. Vid waved Ruus to him and into a tapcaf.

"What is it? Are we under attack?"

Vid's com beeped and Kelles was on the other end.

"Wol! What's going on? Why have you stopped?"

"I got a feeling we were being baited. I think it's a trap!"

"I'm on him!" said Aneara's voice.

"Close in!" ordered Kelles. "Drive him toward Shula and Tory!"

"No!" growled Vidian.

"Get back on the hunt, Vid!"

Vidian cursed, but direct disobedience could be more dangerous than a "trap" that was only a suspicion.

"We're on it", he answered.

Ruus punched him in the shoulder, a gesture asking, "What were you thinking?"

The com clicked, "Wait!" said Aneara. "We lost him! He just blanked out!"

A jolt of fear rippled through the Force and a sound of shredding plastic and twisting metal. Aneara's unit was gone, ripped instantly out of existence.

"Aneara?" It was Kelles' voice.

Vid grabbed Ruus by the sleeve and pulled him back into the tapcaf. Ruus had his blasters out, frightening the staff and other customers.

"Dav?"

Vidian picked out the manager of the tapcaf,"Back entrance?"

The Duro woman pointed to the right of the service counter.

"Ruus! This way!"

"Dav Hollerman! Danal Bork! One of you, come in!"

Vid paused to let Ruus take the lead as they reached a service lane behind the building. He keyed Dor and Fila, "Stop talking and get out of there! It was a trap and there might be more!"

Chapter 16 - THE TIME HAS COME FOR HUNTING, TOO LATE TO RUN AWAY, IT'S YOU I'VE COME A`HUNTING, A`HUNTING FOR, TODAY…

The building was made to be a formidable obstacle. A truncated pyramid nested on an octagonal platform, its sides sloping outward from the native stone roof to its foundations lost amid subsequent construction in the darkness below. It wasn't ancient. It was built during the Clone War and meant to be the footing for a giant plasma cannon capable of destroying capital class ships far out in the stellar system before they could reach the range to threaten the planet with turbolasers. The base was built, but before the cannon could be installed the Battle of Corruscant had come and was won and the Separatist Alliance had been beaten back, losing its military leader in the process.

During the reign of Palpatine it was considered unneeded. The Emperor's famous foresight failed him. The peace he had promised was short-lived and the super-ships he depended on were proven all too vulnerable. When a new alliance came to dislodge the Empire this plasma cannon wasn't there to help discourage them.

The hexagonal base did see use and even action. It was intended as a defensive fortress housing a regiment of Imperial Stormtroopers that would protect the power core, generators and control rooms. These were installed, but during the Galactic Civil War rebel saboteurs gained entry through the, pyramidal base for the cannon's aiming machinery and did enough damage to the power source's containment housing to fatally overheat everyone in the fortress and render the system useless. The core has to be removed along with the generators and the inner structures of the building buried in fill dirt up to the level the generators had once occupied.

It was recommissioned as Fort Tarkin in memory of the Hero of the Battle of Yavin and served for a while as a military prison. Then it was decommissioned again after the surrender of Corruscant to the Rebel Alliance.

During the New Republic Period the Pyramid and upper few stories of the Octogon were refurbished as a training facility for the Corruscant Customs Authority and ironically renamed Fort Organa in memory of Bail Organa, Constitutional Monarch of the planet Alderaan, killed along with the planet's entire population by order of Grand Admiral Tarkin.

After the end of the Vong Occupation an effort was made to restore the fortress again. But it was abandoned midway through when it was determined that the earlier sabotage of the power plant had weakened the four meter thick stone shell and durasteel framework of the fort to the point where it could no longer withstand the force of a turbolaser hit and could be collapsed in on itself by any significant groundquake. The fortress was condemned, its entrance sealed with durasteel plate and the property listed for sale to private developers. It was technically under the management of the Corruscant Bureau of Property Management. They had a maintenance entrance cut into one of the western facing facets of the Octogon two levels below the roof. This was supposed to provide for semi-annual inspections. Otherwise the building was officially listed as empty.

Enrik Voranna stood on the rooftop observation deck of Mannion Center's Tower One and looked across the great open space before him. A warm equatorial breeze ruffled his whiskers and mane and tugged gently at the hem of his Jedi robes.

"Can you feel it?" asked Vidian Wol beside him.

The human had aged since Voranna last saw him. His hair was a little whiter and thinner. His cheeks and the sockets of his eyes were more sunken and the crevasses in his face appeared deeper. His once short and neatly trimmed beard was longer and more ragged looking. Most odd, his eyes had been blue and now they were a pale, yellow green. Enrik was sure of it, noticing such details was a habit that helped the young Bothan know one old human from another and there were a surprising number of older humans he needed to recognize. It was fortunate that their males and females looked almost like different species and that they came in almost as many different color variations and combinations as his own people .

"I can feel what you describe", answered Voranna. "A brighter concentration of the Force's energy where there should be less of it. I do not have your gift of discerning Light from Dark … not at such a distance or with so much profusion of both in the city beyond. But when I let my focus widen it is like the buzz of honey-crafters hidden in their hive. That place is noisier than its surroundings and that should not be."

A decision was needed. Enrik let his eyes take in the city scape once more as he considered his choices.

To the north stood the towers of the Malastere Complex and the multi-tiered Arn Industries Tower with the ridged toroid housings of the Populo Distric Power Station and its venting chimneys. Beyond that the haze obscured forest of buildings faded toward the horizon, a single massive tanker ship hung above Mundo Spacefield.

To the west his view was blocked by the bulk of the Perleman Trade Center Building, its sloping glassteel facade reflecting the rays of the late morning sun back to heat his fur.

To the east he looked over the crescent-shaped roof of Gololo Center to the spire of the Melersan Headquarters Building and then upward to the angled sides of the Annosin Tower One and the giant upended cylinder of Annosin Tower Two. Behind that lay the lower, more utilitarian structure of the Core Consortium Industrial Park where a freighter the size of a Super Star Destroyer was being guided to its cradle by pilot ships the size of Frigates.

North again but lower and nearer at hand, the empty space between these monoliths was not empty at all. To the northeast lay the complex of highroads and ramps known as "Tarkin's Maze", now choked with heavy haulers and light hovercars in its midday routine. In the air above the Maze streams of flying craft resolved into invisible lanes, herded there by neutrino beams impervious to obstructions.

To the due north, beneath more lines of flying traffic and below the landing on which Voranna stood the geometric surfaces of the Pyramid and the flat stone roof of the Octagon of Fort Organa.

"You are right, Vidian. Something is amiss in the old fortress and it bears investigation. How did you ever come upon this?"

"It was either dumb luck or the guidance of the Force. I was going to spend years and search the whole planet if needed. I could have started anywhere, but I picked the equator and it only took me five months to find this anomaly. Does this mean you're ready to call in help from the Council?"

Enrik grimaced as he shook his head.

"I'm afraid you don't understand just how 'touchy' relations between the government and the Jedi are … remember, only recently they were trying to outlaw us. I'm afraid that before we call in more Jedi to act in secret on the surface of Corruscant, we must have confirmation. And if we notify the government before we act, I'm afraid our enemies will hear of it and this group will go into hiding elsewhere."

"What do you suggest?"

"You say that you have plans of the original building?"

Vidian pulled out a datapad with a larger screen that his small communicator. On it he displayed a copy from the original construction, an "as-built" plan that showed the structure as it had been more than sixty years before. Next he overlaid it with survey diagrams from the most recent major construction on the northwest side.

"You can see that here, on the northwest face, was the original entrance. That now almost butts up against the foundation structure of the Arn Industries Tower, well below current commercial occupation. After a fire, they supposedly filled in the bottom levels with soil, but this entrance was actually about half way up the building. A later entrance was put in just below the roof on the west side, but it's well guarded. My bet is that this old entrance will still be accessible, blocked somehow, but accessible."

"What about coral? Has the Yorik Coral been cleared? Can we make it through the building?"

"Some of it was cleared, mostly around the new entrance. But the drawings show an empty shaft running up the middle. My hope is that the coral wasn't able to grow enough before it stopped and the shaft will still be passable. If so it goes right to the top of the hexagon, the base of the pyramid."

Enrik dipped his muzzle and smiled in a Bothan gesture of appreciation.

"You've prepared well."

"I had some time while I was trying to get ahold of you. I researched old plans, acquired some equipment and even got this repaired …"

Vidian reached into his jacket and drew out the lightsaber he'd shown to Enrik on their first meeting.

"I replaced the power cell and cleaned the connections. It works again."

Enrik lay a palm on the hilt, then took it in his hands. Lightsabers built in the traditional way were shaped by their creators and retained some reflection of their essence. Since he first touched Enrik's something had troubled him. He had examined some of the other pre-purge lightsabers in museums and the Temple and this touch helped to confirm what he had noticed. There was a subtle, undefinable difference in Jedi Lightsabers made in the Old Order, from those made since.

He reached to his belt and drew his own weapon, then handed both to Vidian.

"Tell me, do your senses detect a difference between these two lightsabers? Something deeper than the obvious. Something to do with the people that made them?"

Vidian held both for several minutes.

"I can tell many differences, but those are of the obvious sort … There's something … but I think it might just be that this one is yours and you are standing right here …"

Enrik raised one brow.

"Ars-Moselet's weapon feels … at ease in my hand. Yours is somehow … "restless". I can't define it better."

Enrik took his weapon back and stored it.

"Perhaps it's some art the old Jedi knew that Yoda did not pass on to Master Skywalker", Enrik conjectured. "Or some reflection of the differences between the Old Order and the New … those certainly exist. I have felt a glimmer of something similar … but not the same."

"We should get off of this platform", suggested Vidian, pocketing his memento. " I feel too exposed up here."

They climbed down a stair to the roof-top landing pad where Enrik had parked his ship.

"You have some idea about this", said Vidian. "I can see that much."

At Enrik's suggestion they took a turbo lift to a dining room in the Mannian Center. Vidian ordered a wog-leg soup with brown bread and Enrik had a Buxu nut stew. When the serving droid had left their food and departed, Enrik resumed the conversation.

"I brought my suspicions up with Master Horn and he suggested that I discuss it with Master Skywalker. It took me a little looking to find him … but that's another matter. When I did, we took a trip to Yavin 4 and he examined several old lightsabers preserved there. It's just a theory, mind you, but he thinks that this may be a clue to a mystery that has troubled us, as it did the Masters of the Old Order … the reaction you just described, adds another clue."

"What did Master Skywalker find"

Enrik took a bite of his stew and chewed it while he thought about his answer.

"Nothing. Master Skywalker is as much more powerful than I am, as, forgive me, I am more powerful than you. Master Horn and many others could faintly sense a difference. The same difference I sensed. But Master Skywalker and a few others could not sense that difference at all. It was very troubling."

They both ate a little more in silence.

"And what", asked Vidian, "does my reaction tell you?"

Enrik Voranna put down his spoon, resting it in the remains of his stew. He lifted his tea cup and drained it. Then set that down as well.

"Not many know this, but Emperor Palpatine came back after the Battle of Endor. He had cloned himself and used Sith arts he learned from his Master to reincarnate his mind in that body. He was stopped, and we believe is gone now forever. But for a brief time he managed to overcome Master Skywalker and turned him to the Darkside."

Vidian was incredulous. It was as though Enrik had revealed that the Prophet Vod had secretly been a Sith Lord as well. Then the context of what he'd been told came to him.

"And I … ?"

"My friend, Vidian. You have wondered, have you not, why we turned down your offer to train our weaker Force users as you were trained?"

"You think that I … ?"

"We 'know', Vidian. Perhaps you cannot see it because you are too close, but Corran and the others could see it. And I can see it. And yet, I do call you "my friend" because you have found some way not to be lost altogether to its power."

"Think, Vidian … when Beddar recruited you, what drove you to join, what motivated you?"

"You've told me of your training. What did you feel when your fellow students were struck down before you? Or at that last review, you've said a fellow student was strangled right next to you. What did you feel then? Was it sorrow? Or indignation? Or relief that she had died and not you?"

"When you hunted the Jedi, did you feel pity for them? Or did you feel fear and relief when they died and others died, but you lived on?"

"When you killed that second Sith, Vidian, did you think he was too distracted? I thought and I am sure he thought, that your knife was aimed at me. The Force guided your throw. But Vidian, you are now and always have been a user of the Dark Side of the Force."

Vidian sat unmoving, head bowed, jaw slack, eyes fixed upon he cloth on the table between them, his spoon in his hand frozen just above the bowl. A tear broke free from his left eye and ran part way down his cheek. He knew that Voranna spoke the truth. The events of his past flickered through his mind in minute detail and he saw the truth for the first time.

"But, Vidian, there is something else … I don't know what he did, but I believe that after your meeting with Ars-Moselet, you still used the Darkside, but you no longer were its servant or its slave. You changed. We checked on you. You have lived as a good man, more so than you told us, yourself. There is Darkness in you. It can come to the fore and it is strong, closer to a Jedi's strength than you understand. We cannot let you train younglings, but you fight against your Darkside and we want to help you."

"Can it be cured", asked Vidian, his voice a whisper.

"Not that we know of. Everyone is tempted by the Darkside, but for those who have truly fallen to it … it is a part of them, a part that wants to be all that they are. Master Skywalker says that it is always there, an empty hunger that gnaws at our weakness and is never sated, relieved at times, lessened over time, but he says that we are the sum of all that we have been and that the parts of what we have been never go away."

The serving droid came to get their dishes. Enrik and Vidian left the dining room, but paused again before reaching the turbolift.

"What should we do now?" asked Vidian.

"Given the political situation we cannot call in more help until we have a better understanding of what the threat is. I need to see if I can get in by the old entrance you mentioned and find out what is happening in that Pyramid."

"Do you want my help?"

"I'd welcome it. Your skills are different from mine and I trust the man I see."

"Enrik … I will help you. And when we are done, I will go with you to Yavin. I carry a burden, like the one your Master describes. I thought that hunting for the Lightside would alleviate it. But I will be comfortable to stand aside and tend the gardens. I am old. And I am tired and I need to rest. And there are parts of me that need to heal."

Using the diagrams Vidian had downloaded, they road the turbolift down to where they could find lanes that would take them into the Perleman Trade Center and from there into the undercity, the lamplight zone clustered about the bases of the great towers.

"Why did we meet on the top of that building?" asked Voranna. "I can sense the concentration from here more clearly. And I trusted your word before we met."

"It is my habit", answered Vidian. At least, when I can pursue it. To look over the land first, before one seeks the target of the hunt. My father taught me to do that in my childhood on the planet where I was born … have you heard of, "Naboo"?

"I've heard of it. I've never been there, though."

"My father was a Game Keeper on one of the Great Estates. He told me … "Always look over the ground first. Learn it and you will know where your quarry will be. Don't look for the quarry. Look for where it will be."

"So your father taught you hunting?"

"Some. An uncle taught me more. My father was killed when I was still quite young during a dispute with the Trade Federation. I don't know what it was about. But my uncle took me on while my mother took my sisters to Corellia. Eventually they sent for me, but I chose to come to Corruscant and work with a cousin who was a private investigator. It turned out I had some talent for finding people and … the rest you know."

In the lamplight zone they found an old Aqualeesh who guided them to an entrance in the dark world beneath. At first this zone had some lamps, jury-rigged from sources above, but this was an area truly never consciously designed. Yorik Coral and fractured piles of it that had fallen from above had created a labarynth of paths and crawlways between small hovels and little dwelling clusters made of discard and detritus. These spots of habitation mostly clustered around some pirated energy, keeping glowlamps alive, but many relied on oil lamps with fuel drawn up wicks from whatever container was available. They smoked and filled the still air with a greasey smell competing with decay and the scent of coral dust.

Most of the residents depended on the world above where they begged or stole or sold what little their bodies possessed. Many were spice addicts, some fugitives and some had lived in this place long enough to become its version of permanent residents. No one lived here long though and those that died in this place never needed to be buried. Bodies disappeared in a matter of a few days, sustenance for creatures living even deeper down, in crevices and cracks or hollows made by seepage or burrowing among the gravel.

The dark zone had just one law, don't bother others. Those who did soon disappeared. As Vidian and Enrik worked their way through this near pitch-black world they soon found that their communicators could get no signals and if not for the Force they would have soon been lost. Even so, twice they needed guidance to find their way through difficult passages. The denizens, both animal and sentient tended to slink away from the lights they bore, but they would come forward for the offer of a credit chip. They would take it, creeping forward, hand extended and point the way, but no words were spoken, no questions asked.

When they reached the old entrance to the Octagon they found that the opening had been sealed by a durasteel plate and in the opening, against that plate, a two storied row of small shanties, four across, had been erected. Most were empty because it was the time of day for foraging in the lamplight zone. The few occupants present remain hidden in piles of rags and discarded items.

Enrik went to the least established looking shack and lit his lightsaber. With the Force he swept the junk from the floor then thrust his blade into the durasteel back wall. Vidian joined him with his lightsaber's silvery blade and in minutes they had cut an oval doorway large enough to allow them to step through. The loosened center fell inward with a soft 'thump' as it hit the floor.

Just inside the door they'd cut they came into the end of a squared tunnel partly filled with loose rubble. The pile rose from the floor to eventually fill the space about twenty meters in.

"We won't get in that way", said Vidian, shining the beam of his hand-held glowlamp at the point where the pile leveled just before it met the roof.

"We'll have to make our own way", said Enrik.

They climbed the gravel slope of fill material. It was difficult. Their feet sunk into the smaller bits of fractured duracrete and sometimes it slid beneath them, pulling them back down the way they had just come. The Force would have helped, but this close and inside the Octagon itself, Vidian warned against its use.

"There was a saying on Naboo … 'Curse outside a man's house and he'll pay it no heed. Curse inside his house and he's sure to notice'. If they are Sith in the Pyramid, they'll be watching for Force-users. And they'll notice us here, below them when they might not have if we were still out in the city around them."

Helping each other, they made it to the top, only to find that the way was blocked, the flatter gap at the top of the pile slowly diminished and was gone in another ten meters.

Enrik's lightsaber ignited and he cut a round hole in the duracrete floor above them. The plug dropped onto the sloping gravel causing them to slide back down a few meters. But their lamps showed empty space above. It was a two man job getting high enough again to climb through the opening. When they did, Enrik shown his lamp inward, toward the southeast and they saw that the rubble pile blocked inward passage in this room as well.

They rested for Vidian's sake and as they did, they noticed that the gravel included the wrecked slabs and broken uprights of a demolished wall. The roof was half as high as in the first level they entered and the pile didn't come outward quite as far.

Enrik studied Vidians datapad for a few minutes.

"It says here that saboteurs caused the power plant containment to fail and after that they filled in the sub-basement to prevent the risk of new fires in the rubble."

"Yes", agreed Vidian. "I supposed this mountain we're seeing is the fill dirt they poured in."

"I think I understand what we are facing. There is a great shaft running up the center of both the Octagon and the Pyramid. It's labeled, "Vertical Access Shaft" on these drawings. The easiest way to get a lot of material into the fortress once it was built would have been to pour it in from above, through the top of this shaft."

"Yes, that makes sense. The power plant was located below where we are, at the base of that shaft."

Enrik continued, "So when they poured thousands, of tons of fill dirt into the shaft that had recently been super-heated by the power plant failure, it would build outward pressure on the sides of the shaft, weakened by the fire and burst out into the areas surrounding the shaft."

"And that's what we are seeing", concluded Vidian. "So this gravel is really a huge mound. The higher sections would have been less damaged by the heat and held the gravel better. Then when the lower levels burst the gravel in the shaft would have sunk as the gravel beneath it flowed out into the surrounding building … "

"So the pile should rapidly diminish and we should be able to find non-mechanical back-up stairs because no one would build such a structure without them."

"Well that's heartening. So let's cut our way into the next level and see if it's true."

In two more levels the gravel was gone and they were able to reach a stair on the north exterior of the central shaft. But they had only climbed six levels when they ran into landings and sections encrusted in coral growth. It was dead and bare, but still strong. By the tenth level they could no longer climb through it.

"This is only going to get worse as we climb higher", said Vidian.

They paused for a light meal. Enrik had a wrapper with two energy biscuits and Vidian had brought a small bottle of water and a packet of dried fruit and meat. A little water in the packet restored the dried goods to edible and they sat for a while, chewing and thinking about their problem.

"It will take a day, maybe more, to cut through all of the floors between here and the level of the new entrance."

"We could skip food, but we need water and we only have a few sips left. We would need to go back for more supplies", said Vidian.

"And we'll be on a level that we know that the people that we are hunting use."

"We could look for another stairwell" Vidian offered.

"If we have to, we will", said Enrik, "but I think we'll find that the coral is everywhere from here on up … at least until we reach the area that was cleared."

"Then let's take a look at the utility shaft and see if we can get up that way."

The walls of the vertical access shaft were more than a meter thick, too thick and resistant to heat to have made cutting their way in practical. But the shaft was designed to be accessible and after about a half hour of searching they found one of the access doors. The hatch was of layered durasteel and ceramic, heavily reinforced to contain the energy of hostile fire. Shifting in the stone surrounding it had left it inoperable, but it was still a weak point in the shaft's side and in ten minute the two hunters had cut it into pieces and pulled them out of the way.

"It's 1800 hours", reported Vidian.

"Good",answered Enrik. "Maybe the Sith will all be having dinner."

The interior of the shaft was black and somewhat glossy, effects of the heat of the core meltdown and the carbonization of anything burnable in the control and generator levels, now buried somewhere below. The shaft itself was about five meters wide, the conduits and cables that once ran through the shaft had mostly burned or melted away at this level along with the fittings that secured them to the walls. Here and there were uneven patches that showed where durasteel had liquefied and dripped or run in rivulets down the stone. Twenty meters below them, a ring of gravel marked where an irising blast door had partly closed before warping and welding in a three-quarters open position.

Looking up, they could see a similar door five meters above them, stuck at the same three-quarters closure. But this door held a square framework of steel beams from which hung some lengths of steel cable. Gravel piled on the open rim of the blast door and bolted on fittings where the beams met the door explained this modification.

After studying it for a moment Enrik spoke his theory …

"These are automatic blast doors. The one below us was only able to partly close, there are probably others below that one. The one above us did close, or mostly closed, cutting the conduits as they did and trapping the heat below instead of preventing heat and pressure from coming down from above. When they went to deal with the damage afterward they opened the doors they could to allow the fill dirt to be dumped in to bury the core. The door above melted closed, so they cut out its center … now that I think of it, they might have done that to the one below as well. That could explain why the framework and cables were added … you can see a roughness on the edge of the door above us."

Vidian considered.

"Why build a safety system that would cut the conduits and render the cannon useless?"

"I don't know … maybe they … If a blast came down the shaft, it would have to have already hit the cannon and its mounting. This would save the generators and the core so a new cannon could be mounted later … anyway, whatever their plan was … if we can jump to those cables and climb to the next level, I expect that the shaft will be more intact above that next door and we'll be able to find a way up from there."

An hour later they had climbed almost to the top of the shaft. The damage had lessened as Enrik predicted. The walls were no longer blackened and their fittings, including a built in ladder of metal rungs sunk into the wall were mostly intact.

The third blast door was behind them and in its normal, open position. This revealed the trigger mechanism for closing the door, a "breakable" connection in a spring-loaded bolt mounted in a cavity in the wall about one meter above the door. Either a great shock, like a turbolaser hit or enough heat would sever the link allowing the door to close. Whether this one had failed or had triggered and been restored, they could not tell.

Above this door they found encrustations of Yorik Coral, indicating that seed must have drifted in from above at the same time that the rest of the structure was contaminated. The fourth door, about ten meters above the third was in its closed position. There was a gap about one meter wide at its center, answering the question about how cables and conduits had been dealt with. The doors would close around them, but not sever them. The gap at the center did not, however, provide a way in or explain the coral growths inside the shaft. It had been sealed by what looked like a plate of durasteel, probably before the Yuzhaan Vong invasion.

Standing on the rim of the third door, Vidan pointed to a thicker encrustation of coral extending from the closed fourth door almost down to the third door. Near the top was a large inverted triangle of shadow, a gap where the wall had broken and been partly re-filled with coral.

"I think that's our way in. The plans show that the roof of the Octagon is not as thick under the Pyramid as it is where it is exposed to the open air."

"But we are under where the Pyramid sits, right?"

"Yes. I suspect the original melt down caused fissures in the roof. When the Vong-forming started, seed got into the building through those fissures. This is just the only one that extends far enough to reach the central shaft."

By cutting foot and handholds into the coral encrustation they were able to climb into the gap, which proved to open onto a room mostly filled with larger growths of coral. A partially exposed stair led to what had been a doorway into the Pyramid. The opening was sealed-over by a horizontal durasteel plate, probably like the one closing the blast door. Enrik placed his hands on it, letting the force connect him to whatever lay above while Vidian surrounded them in a bubble of energy designed to absorb and diffuse the impressions of anyone on the other side.

"I'm sensing people using the Force. But they're not above us … somewhere to the south and another… more than one to the north."

"Is it safe to cut a hole?"

"I think so. I'll use just the tip of my lightsaber so it doesn't show as much. If anyone spots it, we'll have to run and fight our way out."

Vidian doused their lamps. He gave the lightsaber in his pocket a pat to make sure it was where he could draw it. Reassured, he left it there, touched the dagger in his belt and drew his blaster.

"I'm ready."

Chapter 17 - GONE NOW THE HUNTERS, THE HUNTERS FORCED TO YIELD, BEFORE THE GREATER HUNTER, GONE NOW FROM THE FIELD …

That evening Dor Kelles and the Lieutenants called an emergency meeting of the command staff. The remaining Hunters and the four clone squad leaders were there as well. Antorean and Vassik were furious about Vidian's call to abort the hunt. Dor Kelles backed him and that made them furious with him as well.

"Wol called it as he saw it! He suspected a trap and tried to warn us. If I'd listened, those three might still be alive."

"They were hit by a charter bus!" Vissik snapped. "The Jedi didn't throw a bus full of people at them!"

"It wasn't full of people", growled Ruus Hammer. "Just a droid pilot and a C3PG tour guide. The only people killed were our three!"

Antorean was trying to act the role of moderator, "Do you know who was on his way to join us when this happened? Forget all the blaming for a few minutes and think about the bigger issues. Three desertions, that Padawan escaped and then this! Do you understand how failure is viewed in the Empire?"

"Vid followed procedure," repeated Kelles.

"Well that … " Vissik didn't finish his sentence as two strange Stormtroopers entered the Command and Control Room.

Vid and Fila sensed the approach before the others. The color visibly drained from the faces of Antorean, Vissik and Kelles, the clone sergeants snapped to attention and the rest of the team turned in their seats as a third figure followed the two new clones.

He appeared in the darkened doorway, a shadow in the blackness beyond. He swept past the Hunters to the head of the group, gathered on and before a low stage platform. A projector beamed a map of Low Forre onto the wall behind them. Kelles smiled uncomfortably.

"Lord Vader! What an honor to …"

Darth Vader lifted one hand and Kelles was raised several inches off the floor clutching at his throat, choking. Then a quiet, hard look came across his features and he dropped back to the ground. Vaders raised hand was turned into a pointing finger aimed at Kelles.

"You dare try to resist me?"

Kelles flinched but stood his ground, "Would you think better of me if I didn't at least try?"

The tension in the room was palpable for a moment, then Vader suddenly relaxed.

"A useful talent, Commander Kelles. You may yet justify my faith in you."

Kelles relaxed a little bit.

Lieutenant Vissik spoke next, "We were just reprimanding Commander Kelles for allowing the Jedi to slip through our dragnet."

"Do not volunteer information I have not asked for, Lieutenant."

"My apologies, Lord Vader." If Vassik could have made himself disappear, he would have.

"I am aware of what happened today. For now, I will let the matter rest …"

Vader turned toward Kelles again.

"Weakness is stifling your efforts. Get rid of it."

"Yes, Lord Vader."

"I will be sending you an additional three companies from the Five-Oh-First under Major Assoran. He will take command of this operation. You will advise him. We have intelligence that Daas Le-Anok will be meeting with Senator Mon Mothma and I believe that these Jedi you are hunting are involved somehow. Do not fail me again, Commander."

"I won't … Lord Vader."

His message delivered, Darth Vader turned and walked back out through the door with the two Stormtroopers following.

It had been nearly two years since Vidian first saw Darth Vader as he began his service with the Hunters. He could not believe the aura of despair and bitter malice that emanated from the titular leader of all of the Jedi hunting teams. He was like a walking pustule of infection …

"Is this what I have been serving?"

He felt the touch of Fila's hand. She was sitting in the chair next to his and as their eyes met, he could see that she had seen the same abomination of the spirit that he had. At that moment he saw that they too must escape this life or be destroyed by it. All loyalty he had to the Hunters was vanished.

The meeting went on. The blame and recrimination of earlier was abandoned. It no longer had a purpose. Antorean spoke well of Major Assoran's reputation. He wanted to appear to be the one the administrators could count on. Vissik pulled up information on the senators and their known associates while the tech team set up holographic displays of Low Forre's territory and varying levels. In the hours that followed they worked out a plan to present to their new leader in the morning.

Cross-referencing all of the weak hits the team had logged in the previous days identified six areas of higher concentration. They might mean nothing more than a larger number of people with minor to moderate Force powers. But there was a chance that the higher hits included stronger Force users, noticeable in spite of shielding their presence. One of the areas in particular, was about a half kilometer from where Fila had first picked up the suspicious contact the day before. The team would go in full force this time, with Vidian and Fila leading two squads of Stormtroopers on the flanks and a third airborne for quick reinforcement. All of the Hunters had at least some ability to sense the Force in others, just as virtually all Jedi had some ability in this. They would spread out, sweeping through swaths as much as two kilometers across, hoping to panic any fugitive Jedi into fleeing or fighting. It was a dangerous strategy they called "beating the brush". In the past it had worked, but the Jedi tended to kill the first hunters to reach them and sometimes still got away.

By the time they finished there was no time left for anything but preparing their kits for the following day. There would be no disguises. Everyone would be going into the field in full fighting gear. Their equipment was checked and stored on its racks. Then, to lessen the possibility of desertions during the night, the racks of battle-gear were carted and rolled off to a locked storage room down the hall. The Hunters were left with only their sleepwear, their personal kits and hand-blasters.

Vidian had trouble falling asleep. The deaths that afternoon had pushed him toward a decision to look for his chance and get away while he could. Darth Vader's visit had confirmed that decision. He was leaving the Hunters, no matter what it took. The only thing he hesitated about was Fila. He wanted her to go with him, but hadn't had a chance to see if she was willing. It might take weeks to sound her out discretely and it would have to be done discretely because if she refused … he would need to plan and prepare and if she wouldn't go with him, he'd have to prevent her from revealing his plan. He fell asleep making lists in his mind of the supplies and information he'd need, how he'd get away, where to go to ground, how to get off planet and how to get the credits he'd need to pay for it all …

Vid awoke to a shuddering rumble that shook his cot. Death cried out in the Force close bye.

"Vid?" cried Fila.

The floor lifted and dropped, then lifted and dropped again tossing Vidian and most of the others onto the floor. The dim light from the hallway flickered as vid felt for his sidearm.

"Attack!" yelled Dor Kelles.

"It's Jedi!" shouted Fila. "More than one! ….. They're coming!"

The light in the hall went out, but someone found a hand lamp and lit it. It gave a weak, shadow-filled illumination to the room in which Vidian could see Ruus, Dor Kelles and Tory by the door with Fila croutched behind them. The room was a jumble of fallen over cots and people hunting for their blasters.

Beyond the group at the doorway the light of blaster fire flickered on the wall.

"Block the door!" shouted Kelles and he seized a cot and lay it on its side across the doorway.

Ruus and Tory each grabbed other cots and stacked them in the opening while Kelles went for another . This was the signal the rest of the team needed and in moments seven more cots joined the barricade.

Vidian felt the attention of a determined mind turn towards them as the sound of blaster fire abruptly ended.

"He's coming!" gasped Fila.

"Spread out!" ordered Kelles. "Concentrate yo…"

Kelles order was silenced as a wave of Force energy smashed into their barricade sending the cots and Dor Kelles flying toward the back of the room. Vid dodged one cot but saw another hit Fila, knocking her backwards. Tory and Hue were hit as well, but the rest of the team opened fire on the figure of a young human male standing in the door frame, the glowing rod of a blue lightsaber in his right hand.

"It's that kriffin' Padawan!" yelled Tory.

The lightsaber moved and the shots they fired were batted back into the room. Tory took one in the throat, one burned a crease across Vidian's thigh and another hit Fila in the left shoulder, sending her sprawling back against the cot she'd just leaped over.

Vid recovered and fired, aiming at the jedi's gut just as new blaster bolts came at him from back in the C&C room and at least three of his teammates fired almost at the same moment. The lightsaber twirled into a blur and the Jedi managed to block five of the shots. One flew back to hit Hue Armantian in the chest. But vid's shot and one aimed at the Padawan's head made it through. The Padawan jerked and flopped limply to the floor, his lightsaber blinking out as it clattered across the tile.

A scream from the C&C and the sound of more blasters snapped the team into action. Ruus Hammer leaped through the doorway and out of sight in the direction of the C&C as Daz Beller and Shula Teems began to follow. The loud buzz of a lightsaber sounded and Ruus' red-haired head rolled back along the hallway and past the door.

In the midst of this, Vidian heard a moan that gave way to a sigh. He reached back to check on Fila and found her right arm clammy and cold. Forgetting the fight he turned and took her in his arms. He could feel that she was still alive, but she was in shock and slipping fast into unconsciousness.

The Force rippled and Vidian looked over his shoulder, back toward the doorway. Daz held out one hand warning Shula back. A dark figure appeared in the door, half the height of a man, its head tapering back to a point, the smoke from a blaster wound revealed in the light of the silver-bladed lightsaber it held in 'front-guard'. The Gossam's eyes stared straight ahead.

From his croutching position above Fila, Vidian raised his blaster back-handed and fired. Fraddor Unamassi, to Vidans left screamed and fired. Shula Teems snapped off a shot as she back-pedaled away from the door. And to her left, Daz Bellar swung his blaster toward the Jedi and fired.

The Jedi disappeared in a blur of swirling white light. He ducked Vid and Daz's shots and swept his blade through Shula's waist and Daz's back, batting Fraddor's shot aside, then spun through the air to land next to Fraddor and behind Vidian. As Fraddor's already lifeless body toppled the silver blade snapped forward and cut Vid's blaster in two. The muffled, slushing sounds of Vidian's teammates hitting the floor sounded louder than explosions in his ears. He turned falling back onto his rump beside Fila as Kamit Ars-Moselet raised his lightsaber for the finishing stroke …

The Jedi spat a gob of blood onto the floor and settled to his knees, the blade of his lightsaber retracting as he did.

His breath ragged and wheezing from somewhere on his side, the Jedi crawled to the other side of Fila, close enough that Vidian could have reached across her and touched him.

"For some reason …" Ars-Moselet began, "the Force does not want me to kill you."

He looked at Fila's face.

"Do you care about this woman?"

"Y…yes!" croaked Vidian.

"That is interesting, but good. But she will die if we don't bring her back from the shock she is in."

He lay a hand on the wound on her shoulder. For a long moment, he said nothing more, but Vidian could hear Fila's breath deepen and see, even in the dim light of scattered hand lamps that her color looked less deathly.

"Your team did quite well. Better than I expected … We have heard about you "Hunters"… it seemed right that we should hunt you instead … but this was all a diversion. There are more important things happening while attention is focused here."

Ars-Moselet waved a hand and a blaster flew into it. He lay it on Fila's lap. Then he lay his lightsaber next to it. He smiled and gestured toward the blaster.

"Pick it up. Use it. I'm in no shape to run and I don't want to be captured by your masters. But take my lightsaber. You will want it someday."

Vid picked up the blaster and pointed it at the Jedi's chest.

"Trust in the Force, young one. You will need it and it will be there."

Ars-Moselet shut his eyes and Vidian Wol pulled the trigger.

Chapter 18 - HOME HAVE COME THE HUNTERS, TO SEEK THEIR WILEY PREY, AND FIND THAT HE WAS HUNTING WHILE THE HUNTERS WERE AWAY…

Enrik cut two curved slices into the duracrete ceiling not quite outlining a small hole, just big enough for either of them to pass through in a hurry, if need be. He angled his blade to make it slightly bigger at their end than at the top. Then two spies braced it with their hands as Enrik weakened the final pieces he'd left in place. The slab was almost twenty centimeters thick and the slightly conical plug they lowered weighed close to one hundred kilos. They set it where it wouldn't trip them if they were in a hurry.

The space above the hole was dark, but dim flashes of light played around its edges as though dozens of color-filtered hand-lamps were playing about nearby. A strange racket of noises like busy streets, construction machines and an angry mob filled the air.

At first, assuming that they'd come up in the middle of some strange gathering, Vid and Enrik retreated back to the gap in the wall of the shaft. But no one followed. There were no shouts of alarm and discovery. So cautiously, Vid renewed his shield and Enrik sent out tendrils of awareness, probing with the Force.

There was no one there, not on the floor above them. He found presences, at a distance, on the level above. They seemed alert, committed, but not alarmed, not shielded and not reaching out at all. Above and hundreds of meters away there was a concentration that suggested powerful users of the Force, but they seemed relaxed and disinterested. All around he caught lesser impressions as though the Pyramid was filled with shielded Force-users, but none in the room above, a room that seemed vast, running nearly the width of the Pyramid east to west and half its width, north to south.

Enrik withdrew his probing and signaled Vidian to drop his shield.

"It's very strange up there, but it seems clear. I'm going to risk a look."

Enrik placed his hands on the upper rim of the hole, then vaulted up and out of sight. Vidian listened for a moment. Then heard Enrik's whispering voice.

"It's clear. Come take a look."

Holstering his blaster, Vid followed Enrik's maneuver. He was only able to get himself part way through the hole, but he shifted, putting his hands together on one side of the hole and leaning forward and then rolling to the right, was able to get his legs clear. He rolled into something hard, got his feet under him and found he was kneeling next to a pillar about three-quarters of a meter in circumference.

He was in a forest of duracrete pillars like the one he was hiding next to. Enrik was two meters away, crouching by another. Tiny low-power lasers shown little constantly moving lights that slithered over every surface in a landscape of large cubes, curving walls, pillars and small clearings to east and west. The ceiling was dark and about twenty meters high and there was a wall across which the lights roamed about 20 meters to the north. The architecture was bizarre, the lights confusing and the cacophony of noise made it hard to concentrate.

A sensation of triumph drew Vidian's attention to the west in time to see a beam of light lance out and hit Enrik squarely in the side. Vidian drew and returned fire at the point of origin and saw his blaster bolt impact in the face of a human male in dark clothing.

Vid immediately rolled on his side to where Enrik lay. A sensation of shock and panic came from the direction of the shooter, the lights showed another dark-clad figure diving away from the lumpish form of a body and rolling out of Vid's sight. He grabbed Enrik by the collar of his cloak and started to drag him back to the hole when Enrik moaned and moved his right arm.

Shocked to realize that the Bothan was alive, Vidian ran a hand along the Jedi's left side and found only a warm spot with trace residual energy.

"A stun blast?"

Suddenly a strong Force presence appeared out of nowhere right behind him. Vid tucked forward to the right as searing pain cut through his left arm and shoulder. He rolled using his right hand and arm to give him more distance and came to ground on his right shoulder with his blaster pointing back to where he expected the attacker would be.

The features of the man behind him were half-lit by a pale blue lightsaber's blade. He appeared surprised and had just begun a Force enhanced flip when Vidian's shot caught him in the chest and knocked him off balance. He hit a pillar upside down and dropped with a 'thud'.

Vidian's left arm went from painful to numb and he put his right hand to his shoulder expecting to find it deeply slashed and his arm amputated, but again, he found a hot streak across the material of his jacket but no cut. His arm was paralyzed, but intact. Alarm started to enter his mind thinking he had just killed students armed with mock weapons when the environment suddenly and drastically changed. The swirling lights and loud noises stopped and bright lamps set in the ceiling filled the room with light.

Enrik was beginning to recover. He was conscious, but unable to move well enough to walk or crawl.

"Check on that man," he said, waving a hand toward the fallen attacker by the pillar.

"I shot another," Said Vidian. "The one that shot you. They're both dead".

He grabbed the lightsaber dropped by the second assailant and brought it close so Enrik could see it.

"He slashed me with this and I shot him. But it only left my arm and shoulder numb. It didn't cut me."

Enrik flopped one hand onto the hilt.

"It's a practice sword, used in training."

"I think we are in a training ground … a practice gymnasium. There are structures like buildings around us, but I can see now that they are fakes. The other man shot you with a neural stunner. They know we are here."

"I'd say so," answered Enrik, looking to either side of Vidian. "Buy me time!"

Vidian looked behind him to see two men and a small, dark-skinned woman, all dressed in black like the two he'd slain. They were pointing blasters at the pair.

Vidian felt a barrier diminish and he could suddenly feel their presence.

"Drop your weapons!" the woman ordered.

Vidian tossed down the blaster and the practice lightsaber and raised his hands. Trainees or not, he had sensed the Darkside in the second attacker and had no intention to completely disarm.

"We meant no harm. They attacked us."

"Shut it!" snarled one of the men.

The woman was clearly in charge and the source of the shielding that had allowed them to sneak up on Vidian. She pointed to the men. One grabbed the weapons.

"Guard the Jedi," she ordered. Then to Vidian, "You, come with me."

She walked him to the clearing where the first attacker lay. The two men stood guard over Enrik, their blasters pointed at him. Vidian read murder in their in their emotions. The woman waved her blaster toward the dead man.

"Alter was a good Fighter. You're going to die for this."

Vidian was startled by her use of the term, "Fighter" as though it were a title and understanding came to him. They weren't still shielded by the woman. These were weak Force-users like himself. This was a "Hunter Team" or something like it. Someone was training a new Hunters Team and the man with a lightsaber was an instructor like the one's he'd been trained by.

He felt new presences above and to his right and looked that way. Three Corruscant Security Police and two more black-clad figures stood on an elevated walkway, behind a low retaining wall … one of the police was familiar.

"Vidian Wol!" exclaimed Marder Dallestri. "What are you doing here?"

"He came with a Jedi!" said the woman. "They killed Danzar and Alter!"

"I should be asking you the questions, Captain. I see what you are doing here? But why are you training Hunters in secret and without my help?"

"We don't need your help, old man. We found the Empire's records once we knew what to look for. We know Beddar's secrets better than you do and we know better than to let the Jedi know what we're doing."

"Why not the Jedi? You saw we worked well together."

"Fool!" shouted Dallestri. "You worked well with them. But not all of us are seduced by their power. The Jedi are the real threat to the Republic! Our President understood that and they put her in prison! Who do you think we're going to hunt, Sith? … Oh yes, we'll hunt them. But they're all tyrants, they all think they are above the law. Don't worry, we'll leave the Jedi alone. But if they come here, they won't find us helpless anymore. They won't be able to walk among us in secret anymore. They won't …

A scream interrupted Dallestri. It came from the far end of the training room and Vidian could feel the anger and Darkside energy like a red hot iron bearing down on him. Another followed it, as strong, but not as filled with wrath.

"Bad luck, killer!" smirked the woman. "That's Danzar's lover."

Vidian could sense that Enrik was recovering and preparing to act. But he could sense that others were drawing near from both ends of the hall. If they tried to fight Enrik might beat the Darkside users approaching, but they'd delay him and the number of Hunters he felt approaching, working as teams would bring them both down. He felt his own power swelling within him and heard a voice in his mind from sixty years before …

"This is the time" said the voice of Kamit Ars-Moselet.

"Enrik! Run!" Vidian shouted and the Force flowed with his voice. "Warn them!"

Enrik drew his lightsaber and slashed the pistol hands from both of his guards.

Vidian drew his lightsaber and cut the arm off of the woman guarding him.

Enrik hesitated, but the voice of Vidian Wol said, "GO!" He stepped to the hole and saw to the east a group of five, black-clad figures approaching at a run. He glanced to the west and saw Vidian standing there, silver bladed lightsaber in his hand as a black-clad woman with a red lightsaber leaped from a balcony, screaming in fury. She twisted in mid-air and came down near Vidian with her blade slicing toward his neck.

Enrik pulled the baster Vidian had carried to him, turned and shot the nearest of the reinforcements through the abdomen. Four shots came at him and he batted three away, hitting one of the shooters. The fourth, he missed and it burned a furrow along the ribs on his right side.

"GO!"

The attackers were scattering to cover. He looked back toward Vidian and saw him dueling with two Darksiders. As Enrik stepped over the hole, Vidian used the Force to hurl the woman into one of the pillars, hitting it with a bone-snapping, 'Crack!', while he parried the other Darksider's slash, twisted and sliced off his head. But groups of black-clad Hunters moved in engaging him two on one with weapons that resisted his lightsaber's cuts. Vidian was fighting brilliantly and in Enrik's sense of the Force he burned like a bright star.

Blaster bolts came at him and Enrik deflected them.

"GO!" said the voice "I'll follow!"Enrik dropped into the hole with more bolts zipping past his head. He hit the floor, bending at the knees and dove and rolled to the bottom of the stairs. He had just recovered and turned to protect Vidian's retreat when he felt the old man pass into the Force. He hesitated a moment longer to be sure that the mortal presence of Vidian Wol was gone, then stowing his weapons Enrik dashed to the gap in the central shaft's wall and dove through the opening. Catching the rim of coral with one hand he swung down to the narrow rim above the open blast door. Behind him in the encrusted room he heard shouts and the sound of boots landing at the top of the stairs. The enemy was right behind him.

It was completely dark in the shaft, but Enrik guessed at where the metal-rung ladder descended below the blast-door's rim and dove in the darkness. He hit bare wall with his hands and feet extended. As he began to drop he slid his hands to either side and the left one found a rung.

Gripping this handhold his body swung, hitting the wall hard, sending pain radiating from his wounded side.

The beam of a hand-lamp appeared in the opening just above the blast door. Enrik drew the blaster from his belt and fired. A man cried out in pain and the lamp fell free, tumbling down, past the door, past Enrik and on into the darkness below. Just before it passed the blast door's rims it shown for an instant on the metal break-away trigger for the door. Remembering the angle, Enrik called upon the Force to guide his aim and fired. The light of the bolt's impact struck squarely in the weak point and with a grinding, ear- torturing squeal the old door nictated shut.

Enrik knew this respite would not last long. The gap for conduits at the center of the door was wide enough for determined people to crawl through and certainly to shine a spot lamp and shoot through. He focused on climbing downwards as fast as his hands and feet could find the rungs below him.

He had no warning when the first shots zipped past him. The Hunters were good at hiding themselves and confusing Force senses, but this total lack of warning surprised him. Their weakness was that the Hunter with the skill to use the Force to sense him wasn't the same as the Hunter with the power to use the Force to aim and he had managed to put enough distance between himself and the blast door that good aim or good luck was a must. The shots came far too close too many times, but as they did, they hit the stone walls and gave him the light that he needed to gain his bearings. He was just five meters above the cut open blast door with beams making a frame-work around its opening. Using the Force to guide and steady him, he dropped to the nearest beam. His senses warned him and he twitched aside just as the blast that would have hit him streaked by singeing the sleeve of his robe.

He guessed that he must be beyond the range of the Blocker shielding the Hunter's efforts because his sense of the Force suddenly became filled with danger as the barrage of bolts stopped and were replaced by the sound of something heavy caroming off the shaft's walls and structures as it fell. Drawing and lighting his lightsaber, Enrik spotted the doorway they'd entered the shaft by and leaped to its base, somersaulting forward. Then he ran into the room beyond.

The walls vibrated and searing heat billowed through the doorway. Enrik escaped it by diving through a side door, but not without the fur on his left cheek and whiskers being singed. They'd tossed a thermal detonator down the shaft and by good luck it had passed below the doorway before it ignited.

The explosion had raised a fog of dust throughout the lower levels in spite of the shaft's ability to contain such forces. When he found the stairs that lead from the coral-choked levels to the fill-choked ones, Enrik paused to catch his breath and insert the air filters he kept in his small belt-pouch. He wondered if his pursuers had considered that they were setting off a powerful explosive in a shaft built to resist such things. Except for the door and a few gaps along the way, the energy had nowhere to go but up the chimney of the shaft. Anyone in the chamber formed between the closed blast door and the end of the shaft had probably had their ears blasted and lungs seared seconds after the explosion. There would at least be some delay in following him. With the top of the shaft sealed, the heat had no place to escape but through the gap at the top of the shaft and from there, into the practice room.

Thinking about Vidian's sacrifice moved him. He didn't know him that well, though after the hunt for the Sith, they'd visited and talked several times. It might take some time to fully sort his feelings, but he understood already that the Vidian Wol who stood fighting the Darkside Force users had been filled with the power of the Lightside, somehow cleansed of the Dark-taint that had plagued him for so long. There was much to ponder about those seconds. In those final moments Enrik had felt the power emanating from Vidian, though he had never possessed such power before. Was it some trace of the old Jedi Master, Kamit Ars-Moselet or the will of the Force itself in play? If he survived the next hour he'd have time to think about this. Bu he knew without needing evidence that these new Dark-Hunters would soon be pouring out of the main entrance to their formerly secret base to try to find him and buy the time for an orderly withdrawal.

Enrik reached the old entrance without incident. No longer concerned about showing his presence, he used the Force to lift the cut-out oval of metal in front of the opening, turning it so that it overlapped the hole's edges. Then he pulled rubble from the slope inside, piling it against the durasteel plate, blocking the way out.

The dark pathways were still sparsely occupied. Moving through it alone the residents seemed bolder and some even ventured to stand in his way a few times. All backed away as he raced pst them with his lightsaber lit.

When he reached the lower lamp-light level the feeling of the environment shifted more than just the presence of fresher air, reliable light and more social organization could explain. There was fear and a tensness in the people he passed. Something was afoot that didn't target them but made them nervous and on edge. Enrik moved as fast as he could without drawing excess attention, but he was a Bothan Jedi in dirty and ragged robes, he was bound to draw attention. Five minutes into the lamplight zones he could feel the hunt closing in behind him, though the hunters remained hidden.

Enrik was passing through an area of irregular pedestrian alleyways wending tightly among makeshift compartment structures housing low-income laborers, criminals and pensioners. Scattered among these at street level were small shops and alcohol venders, the latter serving as local gathering places. As Enrik passed one he saw customers seated on the crowded kiosk's benches watching him with interest as he passed.

"Greetings, citizens. I've noticed many people eying me strangely. Do you know if they've heard something?"

An old Killik male with the scarred look of a pensioned soldier smiled and offered the information Enrik sought.

"Yee're wun a Skywalker's Jedie, ain't yee?" he asked in a heavy Borderworlds accent. "Yeew mus be wat da'er on aboot."

He seemed friendly and his companions mostly just wary.

"Have you heard something?"

"Nae … seen it. Coople odd types was throo heer a'boot twentney minut agoo. Huntin sumpin was dey. An dan yee shoos up … Dey got off daat ways."

He waved a furred arm uphill, the way Enrik was headed.

"Doan reckon dey'd noo a'boot da scafl'din werks oop da way a'hind heer. Goos oop ta open aeer it doo."

The old man jerked a thumb over his shoulder indicating the direction of the scaffoldings he was talking about.

"Thank you," said Enrik. "You're a good friend."

"Ach!" laughed the old Killik. He raised his glass and then pointed to his chest, "Rebble Alliance, Dombroo Breegaed wer I! Oow yeer Maester mee live, doo ee!"

Enrik touched his breast in salute and took off in the direction the old veteran had pointed.

A tight passage between structures led him to another, narrower lane, littered with cast-off junk from the local households. From there he found a tunnel of form-a-brick that brought him through the next row of buildings to a wire-mesh fence surrounding an abandoned construction site. The fence had been cut and pulled back and scavengers had stripped the site of anything they could, but a girder framework still stood where some opportunist had planned to build another compartment structure under an overhang of what Enrik guessed must be part of the Perleman Trade Center's market level. Near the top of this frame was a gap through which Enrik could see the lights of passing air traffic and the edge of a hovercar ramp. It was a low point in the sunlight zone between the Perleman Trade building and the Mannian Center where his adventure had begun that morning with a meeting with Vidian Wol. If he could get into either building he could get to his ship parked at the top of the Mannian Center.

Enrik entered the construction site through the nearest large cut in the fencing and walked uphill to the base of the girder framework. As the helpful veteran had told him, the uprights and cross-ties of a scaffolding frame climbed up the face of the unfinished building and the cross ties were close enough to each other that, with help from the Force, he could use them to climb to the overhang and look for a way to get to the hovercar ramp.

It had been a hard day of climbing already and Enrik Voranna was weary by the time he reached the top of the construction. In the artificial glow of the sunlight zone's night he could see that the edge of the overhang included a horizontal ledge, just two meters above the top of the southeast corner of the girder framework. He would be able to leap to the ledge and work along its curve to the ramp. The ramp circled just one level below the retail floor of the Mannian Center building. Once there he could take a turbolift to his ship and safety.

Enrik took advantage of his position to scan for the hunters below him. As hoped, they were moving toward the perimeter of the construction site, tracking him relentlessly, but too far behind to catch him.

Rested and somewhat restored by a brief version of a Jedi self-healing meditation, he leaped to the ledge and followed it to where it passed beneath the elevated ramp between the two great buildings to the west and southeast of his position. The ramp was higher than he'd hoped and he had to make a dangerously long leap to reach it. But having hooked his fingers over its edge he was able to summons the Force to boost his body up and onto its pavement. The ramp was bordered by a low wall on either side about one meter higher than the pavement level. A few citizens were out walking its length, taking advantage of the shortcut it provided between buildings. They were startled by his unconventional approach and hurried on toward their destinations.

As a precaution he probed the Force again to see how far his pursuers had gotten. They were still well below, possibly working their way upward through the scaffolding. They had dropped the pretense of hiding their presence and their determination burned clear about them. But something nagged at his awareness and he turned his attention to a distant loading bay in the Mannian Center at the far end of the ramp. They were there, a different group, but with the same determined sense of menace as the hunters below. These pursuers were not hiding either and among them was one much stronger essence, one of the Darkside instructors. Enrik swept the area behind him where the ramp entered the broad base of the Perleman Trade Center. There were hundreds of people scattered across a broad terrace surrounding the building's high central tower, but they were relaxed with no sensation that indicated any interest in him.

The group at the Mannian end were emerging from a large well lighted bay cut into the building's base. They were moving slowly as they spread out across the width of the ramp about twenty meters across from side to side. Without a set of macrobinoculars he couldn't be sure, but there seemed to nine of them, plus the stronger hunter, hanging back.

Above him, twenty stories up, Enrik could see a second walkway crossing between the two buildings. If he could get to the Perleman building he could ride to that level and cross or maybe he'd find transportation he could confiscate as the ramp continued through the base of the Perleman. He turned and took the first step … and was brought up short by a memory of Vidian Wol talking to him and Corran after the second hunt. He was standing at an illustration board, diagraming some of the deployment patterns they would use in "driving" fugitive Jedi into a "surround".

Enrik paused, then pulled out his communicator and placed a call to the New Temple. It was early morning there, but the Council kept auxiliaries stationed in the hyperspace receiver room around the clock. As quickly as he could he began explaining what he and Vidian had found in the old Fortress. He started out talking to a non-Jedi operator and by the time he reached his current predicament he was addressing Master Sebatine, herself. When he finished, the hunters on the ramp were half way across, the hunters on the unfinished building frame were just reaching its top.

Enrik Voranna took two deep, calming breaths as he put his communicator away and pulled out his lightsaber and Vidian's blaster. Summoning speed … he turned toward the hunters coming from the Mannian building … and charged. However many foes awaited him, if this was a "hunter's drive" there would be more in the other direction.

The two leading opponents drew weapons and awaited his charge, standing abreast. All of them were in black armor, a short sword in their right hand, a blaster in their left and a round, target shield on their left arm. The others fanned out to either side in two diagonal lines of three and four each. They formed a deep "V", with the base left open … invitingly weak-looking. If Enrik had not been familiarized with such tactics he might try to cut through or leap over the first hunters and speed his way through the center gap to safety. He would find that the gap suddenly narrowed with the best Fighter closing the end. And just before he reached those fighters, every blaster in the group would open fire at the same moment. It was a one-chance gamble reserved for more advanced Jedi Padawans, but it could work on Knights and Masters as well … as Vidian's grim testimony had evidenced.

Enrik fired at the Fighter on his left, the shorter side of the "V". The Fighter deflected the first shot with a target shield on his arm. The second hit his knee, bouncing off, the armor there, but knocking him off balance. Then Enric dove low to the right of the Fighter on the right. As he passed him he slashed the unarmored back of the man's left knee. Attacking one flank of the formation head –on put members of the hunting team between him and most of his nearest opponents while maximizing his reaction window to shots fired from the other side of the ramp.

Enrik hit the ground rolling as the wounded Fighter behind him fell. His roll brought him close to the next Fighter in the longer arm of the "V" he leaped into a summersault as soon as his feet were beneath him, that carried him over the Fighter who crouched and raised his shield and short sword to fend off a passing lightsaber strike.

The next warrior in line was shifting and to meet the close quarters attack he expected. Enrik landed, dropping low and rolling to the right to present a smaller target and keep this hunter between him and as many others as possible. As he rolled, Enrik snapped off a blaster shot at the hunter he'd just leaped over. It caught him at the base of the neck between his backplate and the edge of his helmet.

The third Fighter was a female humanoid poised for whatever angle Enrik attacked from. She fired as he turned back toward her, the bolt just missed, passing between his knees.

Enrik replied with three rapid shots. She blocked one at her legs, another caromed off her breastplate and the third ricocheted off her helmet, snapping her head back several centimeters.

Enrik sensed the Fighters on the left-side taking aim and he swept his lightsaber to that side to block their shots. Before the female fighter in front of him recovered her stance, he hit her with a Force-push that sent her flying backward into the fourth Fighter.

Enrik pivoted deflecting four shots from the opposite side of the ramp. One block batted a shot back at the first fighter on that side, hitting his armor at ninety degrees and burning through it. He staggered back and lost his footing.

The female Hunter on Enrik's side was injured and out of the battle. The first opponents on both sides of the ramp were wounded and down. The second fighter on Enrik's side was dead. Of the enemies on Enrik's side of the ramp only the fourth and fifth were still immediate threats. And the three Fighters on the far side of the ramp were staying well back trying to adjust to the unexpected tactics while firing individually giving little challenge to Enrik's blocks.

Then the five remaining Hunters tried coordinating fire at Enrik, but the Bothan had trained for this kind of a challenge and he had the greater mastery of the Force. Deep in its influence he dodged and blocked with his lightsaber as he began working his way toward the Mannian building, deflecting most of the shots toward the number Four Fighter. After ten of these deflected shots, that opponent fell from a hit in the groin. Enrik was able to get in a Force-guided shots of his own that killed the third Fighter on the far side by punching through her eye shield and with those two losses, the three remaining uninjured Hunters raised their hands and began backing away. Enrik could see a crowd of black suited figures running toward him from the Perleman end of the ramp, but they too pulled up and came to a halt.

It was clear that someone had decided that the trap hadn't worked well enough and had called it off. They stopped retreating as Enrik began to run toward the Mannian building but when he glanced behind him he saw the new group and the three he'd faced rushing to tend to their wounded and dead and not pursuing him.

As the opening into the building resolved itself into a loading dock with haulers and handler droids he knew that the Darkside instructor he'd spotted was still ahead of him. A group of receiving techs were gathering near the door, attracted by the brief pyrotechnics of the battle. Among them Enrik picked out a dark haired human woman dressed in a black blouse and pants. She was not the one Vidian had thrown against a pillar, but she radiated enough Darkside energy that the Bothan had no doubt that she was an enemy to himself and all other Jedi. He didn't think she was a Sith, though. There was something more ordinary about the malice with which she regarded him. She seemed to have no intention of trying to stop him and Enrik had no desire to have another confrontation that might be joined by the forces on the ramp. But he paused as he drew even with her.

"Who are you?" he asked. "I don't believe I've seen your 'type' before."

The woman gave a dismissive smirk.

"Run along, Jedi. They've decided to let you go for now. Take advantage of it while you can."

The woman pushed her way through the Receiving techs and hauler drivers and walked at a deliberately casual pace toward the group on the ramp way.

Fifteen minutes later, in the cockpit of the small courier class ship the Temple had assigned him, Enrik engaged the repulsors and lifted from the Mannion Building's roof. The lights of Corrucant expanded beneath him as height made the horizon broaden. He would wait at one of the orbiting stations for his back-up team to arrive. There were three other Jedi in the vicinity of Corruscant. It would only take a few hours at most.

By the time they'd arrived and they'd arranged a police backup he assumed that the new Hunters would be gone, but in a hasty departure there would be lots of material left behind and that would provide clues they could trace. The important thing was that an asset to be used against the Jedi had been exposed. With the loss of its secret, the Jedi would be aware of it and prepared.

Vidian Wol had once told Enrik, "The Darksiders teach that there is power in that which is secret." It was one of the things drummed into him as a trainee for Beddar's Hunters.

"But you're not secret anymore" thought Enrik. "And we are not frightened fugitives, cut off from our friends. If you wanted to be hunters, know that now it is you who will be the hunted."

Epilogue –

Vidian Wol's body was found in the practice room. He had been killed by multiple blaster hits. The hilt of the lightsaber Vidian carried lay beneath his body. Blood traces of fourteen other beings were found in the vicinity, but no bodies except Vidian's. His body was sent to his daughter, Dellis and he was buried on Corellia next to Fila, his wife.

The government on Corruscant denied having any program to train Force-sensitives as hunters of Force-users and Captain Dallestri could not be located. He was eventually listed as a fugitive, wanted for questioning.

Demolition on Fort Organa began nine months later.

Two weeks after that, Master Luke Skywalker sat in a secluded nook in the New Temple's gardens, meditating while listening to the gentle splash of water in a nearby grotto. In one hand he held the lightsaber once carried by Vidian Wol and made centuries before by Old Order Master, Kamit Ars-Moselet. In the other hand he held a more recent creation, made by a Jedi of the New Order, killed in a recent assignment on Ord Mantel. A Jedi Knight, Enrik Voranna stood quietly nearby.

"I think you are right," said Skywalker after some time. "I think there is a clue in this, perhaps one that could lead to an answer to, how the 'Old Order' became corrupted and weakened. I think that most likely, you will only find something like a 'weed' that appeared innocent when it first took root, but slowly and imperceptibly spread. Still … it may be worth understanding. If you want to investigate further, I'll support your proposal before the Counsel."

Fourteen months after Vidian's passing, Bessany and her husband, Orest Attenis brought their daughter, Fila to the Temple where Orest was accepted in the Temple Guards and she would be a Trainee in the New Jedi Order.

107


End file.
